
aass_QAAiL 



Digitized by tine Internet Arcinive 
in 2010 witin funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



littp://www.archive.org/details/empressesofromeOOmcca 



THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 




CRISPINA 

3UST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 



THE 
EMPRESSES OF ROME 



JOSEPH McGABE 

AUTHOR OF " THE DECAY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME ' 



WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1911 



DS2.ll 






« NOTE 

THE period embraced by this work extends to the 
fall of the Western Empire, or to the middle of 
the fifth century. It was felt that a more extensive 
range would involve either an inconveniently large work 
or an inadequate treatment. While, therefore, the Em- 
presses of the East have been included down to the fall 
of Rome, it seemed that the collapse of the Empire in 
Rome and the West indicated a quite natural term for 
the present study. The restriction has enabled the author 
to tell all that is known of the Empresses of Rome within 
that period, to enlarge the interest of the study by framing 
the Imperial characters in occasional sketches of their 
surroundings, and to weave the threads of biography into 
a continuous story. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction 

CHAP. 

I. THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS . 

II, THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 

III. THE WIVES OF CALIGULA . 

IV. VALERIA MESSALINA . 
V. THE MOTHER OF NERO 

VI. THE WIVES OF NERO 

VII. THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 

VIII. PLOTINA . . . . . - 

IX. SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 

X. THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 

XI. THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES . 

XII. JULIA DOMNA .... 

XIII. IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS . 

XIV. ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 

XV. ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA . 

vii 



PAGE 
I 

7 

23 

46 

60 

79 

105 

122 

136 

149 

163 

179 

194 

210 

222 

233 



Vlll 



THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 



CHAP. 

XVI, THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 

XVII. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES . 

XVIII. THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 

XIX. JUSTINA 

XX. THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 

XXI. THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 

INDEX 



250 
265 
286 
306 
322 
340 
351 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Crispina. Bust in the British Museum . 

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 



Frontispiece V 



FACING PAGE 



LiviA AS Ceres. Statue in the Louvre 

Julia. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti .... 
Agrippina the Elder. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti . 
Messalina. Bust in the Uffizi Palace, Florence 
Agrippina the Younger. Bust in Museo Nazionale, Florence 
OCTAVIA. Porphyry Bust in the Louvre 



POPPiEA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome . 
From a photograph by Anderson. 

DOMITIA. Bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence 

Plotina. Statue in the Louvre 

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 

Sabina. Bust in the British Museum 

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 

Faustina the Elder. Bust in the Louvre .... 

From a photograph by A. Giraudon. 

Faustina the Younger. Bust (reputed) in the British Museum 
From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 

LuciLLA. Bust in the National Museum, Rome 
From a photograph by Anderson. 

Julia Domna. Bust in the Vatican Museum .... 
From a photograph by Anderson. 

Julia M^SA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome . 
From a photograph by Anderson. 

Julia Mam^EA. Bust in the British Museum . . . 
From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 



28 V 
46 ^ 
70 .' 
82 

112 

118 

130 

142 

164.; 

172/ 

184 



214 
226 



X THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

FACING PAGE 

Marcia Otacilia Severa 236 

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 

Zenobia 248 

Enlarged from coin in the Berlin Museum. 

Salonina and Valeria . 262 

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum. 

Fausta and Flavia Helena 280 

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum. 

iELiA Flaccilla and Honoria 316 

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum. 

Eudoxia and Pulcheria 330 

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum. 

Placidia and Euphemia ....,...• 342 

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum. 



THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 



THE 
EMPRESSES OF ROME 

INTRODUCTION 

THE story of Imperial Rome has been told frequently 
and impressively in our literature, and few chapters 
in the long chronicle of man's deeds and failures 
have a more dramatic quality. Seven centuries before our 
era opens, when the greater part of Europe is still 
hidden under virgin forests or repellent swamps, and the 
decaying civilizations of the East cast, as they die, their 
seed upon the soil of Greece, we see, in the grey mist of 
the legendary period, a meagre people settling on one of 
the seven hills by the Tiber. As it grows its enemies are 
driven back, and it spreads confidently over the neigh- 
bouring hills and down the connecting valleys. It gradually 
extends its rule over other Italian peoples, bracing its arm 
and improving its art in the long struggle. It grows con- 
scious of its larger power, and sends its legions eastward, 
over the blue sea, to gather the wealth and culture of Egypt, 
Assyria, Persia, and Greece ; and westward and northward, 
over the white Alps, to sow the seed in Germany, Gaul, 
Britain, and Spain. A hundred years before the opening 
of the present era the tiny settlement on the Palatine has 
become the mistress of the world. Its eagles cross the 
waters of the Danube and the Rhine, and glitter in the sun 
of Asia and Africa. But, with the wealth of the dying 
East, it has inherited the germs of a deadly malady. Rome, 
the heart of the giant frame, loses its vigour. The strong 



2 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

bronze limbs look pale and thin; the clear cold brain is 
overcast with the fumes of wine and heated with the thrills 
of sense ; and Rome passes, decrepit and dishonoured, 
from the stage on which it has played so useful and fateful 
a part. 

The fresh aspect of this familiar story which I propose 
to consider is the study of the women who moulded or 
marred the succeeding Emperors in their failure to arrest, 
if not their guilt in accelerating, the progress of Rome's 
disease. Woman had her part in the making, as well as 
the unmaking, of Rome. In the earlier days, when her 
work was confined within the walls of the home, no consul 
ever guided the momentous fortune of Rome, no soldier 
ever bore its eagles to the bounds of the world, but some 
woman had taught his lips to frame the syllables of his 
national creed. However, long before the commencement 
of our era, the thought and the power of the Roman woman 
went out into the larger world of pubHc life; and when 
the Empire is founded, when the control of the State's 
mighty resources is entrusted to the hands of a single 
ruler, the wife of the monarch may share his power, and 
assuredly shares his interest for us. Even as mere women 
of Rome, as single figures and types rising to the luminous 
height of the throne out of the dark and indistinguishable 
crowd, they deserve to be passed in review. 

Some such review we have, no doubt, in the two great 
works which spread the panorama of Imperial Rome before 
the eyes of English readers. In the graceful and restrained 
chapters of Merivale we find the earlier Empresses de- 
lineated with no less charm than learning. In the more 
genial and voluptuous narrative of Gibbon we may, at 
intervals, follow the fortunes and appreciate the character 
of the later Empresses. But, no matter how nice a skill 
in grouping the historian may have, his stage is too 
crowded either for us to pick out the single character with 
proper distinctness, or for him to appraise it with entire 
accuracy. The fleeting glimpses of the Empresses which 
we catch, as the splendid panorama passes before us, must 



INTRODUCTION 3 

be blended in a fuller and steadier picture. The tramp 
and shock of armies, the wiles of statesmen, the social 
revolutions, which absorb the historian, must fall into the 
background, that the single figure may be seen in full 
contour. When this is done it will be found that there 
are many judgments on the Empresses, both in Merivale 
and Gibbon, which the biographer will venture to question. 

For the study of the earlier Empresses the English 
reader will find much aid in Mr. Baring-Gould's " Traged}'' 
of the Caesars" (1892). Here again, however, though the 
Empresses are drawn with discriminating freshness and 
full knowledge, they are constantly merging in the great 
crowd of characters. The aim of the present work is to 
place them in the full foreground, and to continue the 
survey far beyond the limits of Mr. Baring-Gould's work. 
It differs also in this latter respect from Stahr's brilliant 
** Kaiser-Frauen," which is, in fact, now almost unobtain- 
able ; and especially from V. Silvagni's recent work, of 
unhappy title, "L'Impero e le Donne dei Cesari," which 
merely includes slight and famihar sketches of four Em- 
presses in a general study of the period. 

The work differs in quite another way from the learned 
and entertaining book of the old French writer Roergas de 
Serviez, of which an early English translation has recently 
been republished under the title " The Roman Empresses, 
or the History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues of the 
Wives of the Twelve Caesars " — an improper title, because 
the work is far from confined to the wives of the Caesars. 
The work is an industrious compilation of original refer- 
ences to the Empresses, interwoven with considerable art, 
so as to construct harmonious pictures, and adorned with 
much charm and piquancy of phrase, if some hollowness 
of sentiment. But it is so intent upon entertaining us that 
it frequently sacrifices accuracy to that admirable aim. 
Serviez has not invented any substantial episode, but he 
has encircled the facts with the most charming imaginative 
haloes, and where the authorities differ, as they frequently 
do, he has not hesitated to grant his verdict to the writer 



4 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

who most picturesquely impeaches the virtue of one of 
his Empresses. Roergas de Serviez was a gentleman of 
Languedoc in the days of the "grand monarque." His 
Empresses and princesses reflect too faithfully the frail 
character of the ladies at the Court of Louis XIV, For 
him the most reliable writer is the one who betrays least 
inclination to seek virtue in courtly ladies. 

It need hardly be said that the present writer is indebted 
to these authors, to the learned Tillemont, and to others 
who will be named in the course of the work. But this 
study is based on a careful examination of all the references 
to the Empresses in the Latin and Greek authorities, with 
such further aid as is afforded by coins, statues, inscrip- 
tions, and the incidental research of commentators. We 
shall consider, as we proceed, the varying authority of 
these writers. We shall find in them defects which impose 
a heavy responsibility on the writer whose aim it is to 
restore those faded and delicate portraits of the Empresses, 
over which later artists have spread their sharper and 
more crudely coloured figures. One may, however, say 
at once that it is not contemplated to urge any very 
revolutionary change in the current estimate of the 
character of most of them. If a few romantic adventures 
must be honestly discarded, we shall find Messalina still 
flaunting her vices in the palace, Agrippina still pursuing 
her more masculine ambition, Poppaea still representing 
the gaily-decked puppet of that luxurious world, and 
Zenobia, in glittering helmet, still giving resonant com- 
mands to her troops. 

But it will be well, before we introduce the first, and 
one of the best and greatest of the Empresses, to glance 
at the development of Roman life which prepared the way 
for woman to so exalted a dignity. The condition of 
woman in early Rome has often been restored. We see 
the female infant, her fate trembling in the hand of man 
from the moment when her eyes open to the light, brought 
before the despotic father for the decision of her fate. 
With a glance at the little white frame he will sa}^ whether 



INTRODUCTION 5 

she shall be cast out, to be gathered by the merchants 
in human flesh, or suffered to breed the next generation 
of citizens. We follow her through her guarded girlhood, 
as she learns to spin and weave, and see her passing 
from the tyranny of father to the tyranny of husband 
at an age when the modern girl has hardly begun to glance 
nervously at marriage as a remote and mystic experience. 
We then find her, not indeed so narrowly confined as her 
Greek sister, yet little more than the servant of her 
husband. Public feeling, it is true, mitigated the harsher 
features, and forbade the graver consequences, of this 
ancient tradition. For many centuries divorce was un- 
known at Rome. Yet woman's horizon was limited to 
her home, while her husband boasted of his share in con- 
trolling the Commonwealth's increasing life. 

In the second century before Christ we find symptoms 
of revolt. The wealthier women of Rome resent the 
curtailing of their finery by the Oppian Law, now that 
the war is over (195 b.c). Old-fashioned Senators are 
dismayed to find them holding a public meeting, besetting 
all the approaches to the Senate, demanding their votes, 
and even invading the houses of the Tribunes and coercing 
them to withdraw their opposition. The truth is that 
Rome has changed, and the women feel the pervading 
change. The passage of the victorious Roman through 
the cities of the East had corrupted the patriarchal virtues. 
Roman officers could not gaze unmoved on the surviving 
memorials of the culture of Athens, or make festival in 
the drowsy chambers of Corinthian courtesans or the 
licentious groves of Daphne, without altering their ideal 
of life. The splendour of Eastern wisdom and vice made 
pale the old standard of Roman virtus. The vast wealth 
extorted from the subdued provinces swelled the pride of 
patrician families until they disdainfully burst the narrow 
walls of their fathers' homes. The hills of Rome began to 
shine with marble mansions, framed in shady and spacious 
gardens, from which contemptuous patrician eyes looked 
down on the sordid and idle crowds in the valleys of the 



6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Subura and the Velabrum. Rome aspired to have its art 
and its letters. 

Roman women were not content to be secluded from 
the new culture, and could not escape the stimulation of 
their new world. The Roman husband must be kept 
away from the accomplished courtesans of Greece and 
the voluptuous sirens of Asia by finding no lesser 
attractions in his wife. So the near horizon of woman's 
mind rolled outward. An inscription found at Lanuvium, 
where the Empress Livia had a villa, shows that the little 
provincial town had a curia mulierum^ a women's debating 
club. The walls of Pompeii, when the shroud of lava 
had been removed from its scorched face, bore election- 
addresses signed by women. The world was mirrored 
in Rome, and few minds could retain their primitive 
simplicity as they contemplated that seductive picture. 

By the beginning of the first century of the older era 
the women of Rome had ample opportunity for culture 
and for political influence. In the great conflicts of the 
time their names are chronicled as the inspirers of many 
of the chief actors. They rise and fall with the cause of 
the Senate or the cause of the People. They unite culture 
with character, public interest with beauty and mother- 
hood. At last the conflicting parties disappear one by one, 
and a young commander, Octavian, the great-nephew of 
Julius Caesar, gathers up the power they relinquish. 
A youth of delicate and singularly graceful features, of 
refined and thoughtful, rather than assertive, appearance, 
he hears that Caesar has made him heir to his wealth 
and his opportunities; he goes boldly to Rome, adroitly 
uses its forces to destroy those who had slain Caesar, 
forces Mark Antony to share the rule of the world with 
him and Lepidus, and then destroys Lepidus and Mark 
Antony. It is at this point, when he returns to Rome 
from his last victories, when the whole world wonders 
whether he will keep the power he has gathered or meekly 
place it in the hands of the Senate, that the story opens. 



CHAPTER 1 

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 

ON an August morning of the year 29 b.c. the 
million citizens of Rome lined the route which 
was taken by triumphal processions, to greet the 
man who brought them the unfamiliar blessing of peace. 
From the Triumphal Gate to the Capitol, past the Great 
Circus and through the dense quarter of the Velabrum, 
with its narrow streets and high tenements, the chattering 
crowd was drawn out in two restless lines, on either 
side of the road, ready to fling back the resonant " lo 
Triumphe " of the bronzed soldiers, bubbling with dis- 
cussion of the war-blackened stretch of the past and the 
more pleasant prospect of the future. The hedges of 
spectators were thicker, and the debate was livelier, under 
the cliff of the Palatine Hill and in the Forum, through 
which ran the Sacred Way to the white Temple of 
Jupiter, towering above them and crowning the Capitol 
at the end of the Forum. There the conqueror would 
offer sacrifice, before he sank back into the common rank 
of citizens of the Republic. Would the young Octavian 
really lay down his power, and becom.e a citizen among 
many, now that he was master of the Roman world? 

Possibly one woman, who looked out on the seething 
Forum and the glistening temple of Jupiter from a 
modest mansion on the Palatine Hill, knew the answer 
to the eager question. Possibly it was unknown to 
Octavian himself, her husband. She heard the blasts of 
the leading trumpeters, and saw the sleek white oxen, 

7 - 



8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

with their gilded horns and their green garlands, advance 
along the Sacred Way and mount the Capitol. She saw 
the people rock and quiver with excitement as painted 
scenes of the remote Dalmatian forests, where her 
husband's latest victories had been won, and the gold 
and silver of despoiled Eg3^pt, and the very children of 
the witch Cleopatra, were driven before the conqueror. 
She saw the red-robed lictors slowly pass, their fasces 
wreathed in laurel; she saw the band of dancers and 
musicians tossing joyful music in his path ; and she saw 
at last the four white horses drawing a triumphal chariot, 
in which her husband and her two children received the 
frenzied ovation of the people. 

Octavian was then in his thirty-fourth year. Fifteen 
years of struggle had drawn a manly gravity over the 
handsome boyish face, though the curly golden hair still 
seemed a strange bed for the chaplet of laurel that 
crowned it. His full impassive lips, steady watchful eyes, 
and broad smooth forehead gave a singular impression 
of detachment — as if he were a disinterested spectator of 
the day's events and the whole national drama, instead 
of being the central figure. The busts which portray him 
about this period seem to me, in profile, to recall David's 
Napoleon, without the slumbering fire and the hard 
egoism. Men would remind each other how, when he 
was a mere boy, fifteen years before, he had found his 
way through a maze of intrigue with remarkable dexterity. 
Now, Mark Antony was dead, Brutus and Cassius were 
dead, Lepidus was dead, and the followers of Pompey 
were scattered. It was natural to assume that dreams of 
further power were hidden behind that mask of strong 
repose. 

Behind Octavian went the body of Senators, with 
purple-striped togas, and silver crescents on their sandals. 
The lines of spectators broke into gossiping groups when 
the tail of the procession had passed on. The white oxen 
fell before the altar of Jupiter. Octavian gave the custo- 
mary address to the Senate, and joined Livia in the small 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 9 

mansion on the Palatine. But for many a day afterward 
Rome bubbled in praise of him. Not for years had such 
combats reddened the sands of the amphitheatre, such 
clowns and conjurors and actors filled the stage of the 
theatre, such sports fired the 300,000 citizens at the circus. 
Never before had the uncouth form of the rhinoceros or 
hippopotamus been seen at Rome. Not since the beginning 
of the civil wars had so much money flowed through the 
shops of the Velabrum and the taverns of the Subura. Such 
wealth had been added to the public store by the despoil- 
ing of Egypt that the bankers had to reduce the rate of 
interest. To a people grown parasitic the temptation to 
make a king was overpowering ; and it was easy to point 
out, to those who clung to the strict democratic forms, that 
Octavian was extraordinarily modest for a man who had 
reached so brilliant and resourceful a position. So within 
a few months Octavian was Imperator, and Li via became, 
in modern phrase, the Empress of Rome.^ 

Livia, unhappily for Rome, gave Octavian no direct 
heir to the purple, and we may therefore speak briefly of 
her extraction. She came of the Claudii, one of the oldest 
and proudest families of the Republic, one that numbered 
twenty-eight consuls and five dictators in its line. A 
strong, haughty race, more useful than brilliant, religiously 
devoted to the old Republic, they had helped much to make 
Rome the mistress of the world. Livia's father, Livius 
Drusus Claudianus, had taken arms against Octavian and 
Antony, and had killed himself, with Roman dignity, when 
Brutus and Cassius fell, and he saw the shadow of 
despotism coming over the city. 

Livia was then in her sixteenth year,^ and had early 
experience of the storms of Roman political life. Her 

^ The title " Empress " was unknown to the Romans. " Imperator " was 
a name of military command. The special use of it in connexion with 
Octavian and his successors was that it was given for life. The more novel 
title " Augustus " was extended to Livia, who later became " Augusta." 

^ Pliny places her birth in the year 54 B.c,, but Dio says 57 B.C., and this 
date is confirmed by Tacitus. 



10 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero, had been promoted more 
than once by Julius Caesar, but, after the assassination of 
Caesar, he had passed into what he regarded as the more 
favourable current. He seems to have steered his course 
with some skill until the year 41 b.c, when, like many 
other small schemers, he came under the influence of Mark 
Antony's wife, Fulvia. Antony was caught at the time in 
the silken net with which Cleopatra prevented him from 
carrying out the ambition of Rome at the expense of her 
country. Fulvia, a virile and passionate woman, tried to 
draw Antony from her arms by provoking a revolt against 
Octavian. She induced her brother-in-law and other 
nobles to rebel, and Nero, who was then prefect of a 
small town in Campania, joined the movement. 

Octavian swung his legions southward, and scattered 
the thin ranks of the insurgents. With her infant — the 
future Emperor Tiberius — in her arms the girl-wife fled to 
the coast with her husband, and endured all the horrors of 
civil warfare. So close were the soldiers of Octavian on 
their heels that at one point the cry of the baby nearly 
destroyed them. Octavian had little mercy on rebellious 
nobles before he married Livia. At last they reached the 
coast, where the galleys of Sextus Pompeius hovered to 
receive fugitives, and sailed for Sicily. They were cordi- 
ally received there by the Pompeians, but went on to 
Greece, and were again hunted by the troops. Long after- 
wards in Rome they used to tell how the delicate girl, the 
descendant of all the Claudii, fled through a burning forest 
by night before Roman soldiers, and singed her hair and 
garments as she rushed onward with her baby in her arms. 
The troubled history of Rome for a hundred years was 
stamped on her mind by a personal experience that she 
could never forget. With worn feet and aching heart, she 
and her husband at last found shelter, until the feud 
between Antony and Octavian had been composed. 

From the straits of exile they returned to their pretty 
home on the Palatine Hill, and the story of her adventures 
ran, and gathered substance, in Roman society. If the 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS ii 

experts be right in assigning to Livia a small mansion 
which has been uncovered on the hill, we find that she was, 
in the year 38 B.C., living only a short distance from the 
house of Octavian. Among the palatial buildings which 
now whitened the slopes of the Roman hills, Nero's house 
— later, Livia's house — was poor, but its mural paintings 
are amongst the most delicate that have been discovered 
under the overlying centuries of mediaeval rubbish. A 
small portico gave shelter from the summer sun, and the 
small, cool atrium (hall) led only to some half dozen modest 
rooms. But Livia was happy in her husband, and sober in 
her tastes. She was then in her nineteenth year, a young 
woman of regular and pleasing, though scarcely beautiful, 
features and rounded form, one of those who happily 
united the old matronly virtue to the new love of society 
and gaiety. All Rome discussed her adventures, and the 
generous feeling which her romance engendered made 
people give her an exceptional beauty and wit — qualities 
which neither her marble image nor her recorded career 
permits us to accept in any large measure. There was no 
whisper of slander against her until the days of her power. 
From this peaceful and happy little world she was now to 
be suddenly removed. 

Octavian, who mingled very freely with his fellows, and 
often supped with the literary men who were now multi- 
plying at Rome, heard the gossip about the youthful Livia, 
and sought her. He was already married, and a word may 
be said about the imperatrices manquees before we unite him 
to Livia. 

In early youth he had been affianced to the girlish 
daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus, but a mere be- 
trothal had little strength at a time when even the marriage 
bond was so frail. When he came to face Mark Antony, 
with many grim legions at his command, and a fresh 
civil war was threatened, peacemakers suggested that the 
storm might be turned from the fields of Italy by a 
matrimonial alliance. The soldiers, weary of slaying each 
other, acclaimed the proposal. Servilia was sacrificed, and 



12 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Octavian was married to the young and hardly marriage- 
able daughter of Fulvia. As we saw, there was a fresh 
rupture with Antony in the year 41, and Octavian sent 
back the maiden, as he described her, to her infuriated 
mother. Some of our authorities declare that Fulvia had 
tried to draw Antony from the arms of Cleopatra by 
making love to his handsome rival, but one can only 
suppose that Antony would smile if he were told that 
his unpleasant spouse — the woman who is said to have 
gloated over the bloody head of Cicero, and thrust her 
hair-pin through his tongue — was offering her heart to 
Octavian. We cannot, therefore, accept the rumour that, 
when Octavian sent back her daughter to Fulvia, he 
maliciously explained that he was anxious to spare Fulvia 
the mortification of thinking that he had preferred the 
pretty insipidity of Clodia to her own more assertive 
qualities. 

The marriage with Clodia had been frankly political, 
and it naturally broke down in the new political dissolution. 
The second marriage had the same origin, and the same 
welcome termination. He had married Scribonia, a woman 
older than himself, during the rupture with Antony, because 
her brother was one of the chief members of the Pompeian 
faction. The leader of this party, Sextus Pompeius, held 
Sicily, and not only welcomed fugitives from Octavian's 
anger, but commanded the sea-route to Rome. Through 
his devoted friend Maecenas, the famous patron of letters, 
Octavian proposed a marriage with Scribonia. It would 
not be unnatural for a woman in her thirties, who had 
already outlived two husbands, eagerly to espouse, and 
probably love, so graceful, ambitious, and advancing a 
youth as Octavian ; but to him the alliance was only one 
more move in the great game he was playing. He could 
bear the strain of a diplomatic marriage with ease, since 
there is no reason to reject the statement of Dio and 
Suetonius that he found affection among the wives of his 
nobler friends. 

It has been commonly held that Octavian masked a tense 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 13 

and unwavering ambition with an affectation of simple 
joviality, and his irregularities have been excused on the 
ground that he used them as means to detect political 
whispers in Roman society. But this view of Octavian's 
character may be confidently questioned. His tastes, we 
shall see, remained extremely simple when he might safely 
have indulged any feeling for luxury, when every rival 
had been removed. That he was ambitious it would be 
foolish to question ; but his ambition must not be measured 
by his success. There are few other cases in history in 
which fortune so wantonly smoothed the path and drew 
onward an easy and vacillating ambition. Octavian could 
well believe the assurances of the Chaldaean astrologers 
that he was born to power. 

With all his simplicity, however, Octavian had some 
sense of luxury in love-matters, and his imagination 
wandered, Scribonia's solid virtue was unrelieved by any 
of the graces of the new womanhood of Rome, her sparing 
charms had already faded under the pitiless sun of Italy, 
and she had a sharp tongue. Moreover, his marriage with 
her had proved a superfluous sacrifice. Fulvia's stormy 
career had come to a close shortly after the return of her 
daughter, and Antony and Octavian had divided the Roman 
world between them. Antony married his colleague's 
sister, but the pale virtue of Octavia had no avail against 
the burning caresses, if not the calculated patriotism, of 
Cleopatra. At the second rupture between Antony and 
Octavian she was driven from Antony's palace at Rome, 
where she was patiently enduring his distant infidelity, 
and sent back to her brother. In the meantime Octavian 
had discovered a pleasanter way of obtaining peace with 
the Pompeians than by the endurance of Scribonia's jarring 
laments of his infidelity. He found, or alleged, that Sextus 
Pompeius did not curb the pirates of the Mediterranean 
as he ought, and he determined to wrest from him the 
rich appointments that he held. He was in this mood 
when, in the year 38 B.C., the young Livia came to Rome, 
and the exaggerated story of her adventures and her 



14 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

beauty began to circulate among the mansions of the 
Palatine. 

Some of the authorities describe Octavian as hovering 
about her for some time, and say that the splendour with 
which he celebrated his barbatoria^ or first shave of the 
beard, was due to the generosity of his new passion. It 
is more probable that he at once informed Nero of his 
resolution to marry Livia. Tacitus expressly says that 
it is unknown whether Livia consented or not to the 
change of husband. Great as was the liberty then enjoyed 
by Roman women, they were rarely consulted on such 
matters. Scribonia received a letter of divorce, in which 
it was suggested that the perversity of her character made 
her an unsuitable spouse for so roving a husband. She 
had given birth to a daughter a few days before, and we 
shall find the later chapters of this chronicle lit up more 
than once by the lurid hatred which was begotten of this 
despotic dismissal. For the moment I need only point out 
that later Roman writers borrowed their estimate of the 
character of Livia from Scribonia's great-grandchild, the 
Empress Agrippina, and we must be wary in accepting 
their statements. Scribonia herself, who came so near 
to being an Empress, we must now dismiss, save that we 
shall catch one more glimpse of her when she follows her 
dissolute daughter into exile. 

Roman law imposed a fitting delay on the divorced wife 
before she could marry again, but Octavian was impatient. 
He consulted the sacred augurs, and, if the legend is 
correct, the diviners gave admirable proof of their art. 
They gravely reported that the omens were auspicious for 
an immediate marriage if the petitioner had ground to 
believe that it would be fruitful. The verdict entertained 
Rome, because Livia was well known to be far advanced in 
pregnancy, and Octavian was widely regarded as the father. 
Whether that be true or no, Octavian intimated to Nero 
that he must divorce Livia, and we cannot think that she 
felt much pain at being invited to share the mansion in the 
Palatine to which all Roman eyes were now directed. An 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 15 

anecdote of the time lightly illustrates the ease with which 
such matrimonial transfers were accomplished at Rome. 
Dio says that, during the festive meal, one of those 
bejewelled boys who then formed part of a Roman noble's 
household, and whose vicious services were rewarded with 
an extraordinary license, said to Livia, as she reclined at 
table with Octavian : " What do you here, mistress ? Your 
husband is yonder," The pert youngster pointed to Nero 
at another table. He had given away the bride, and was 
cheerfully taking part in the banquet. 

Livia's second son, Drusus Nero, was born three months 
after her marriage, and was sent by Octavian to Nero's 
house. Nero died soon afterwards, and made Octavian the 
guardian of his sons, so that they returned to the care of 
their mother. The extreme fondness of Octavian for the 
younger boy lends no colour to the rumour that Drusus 
was his own son. The probability is that Octavian, in his 
impetuous way, married Livia as soon as his fancy rested 
on her. The accepted busts of Drusus do not give any 
support to the calumny that Octavian was his father. He 
loved both the boys, and assisted in educating them, in their 
early youth. It is only when his daughter Julia brings 
her handsome children into the household that we detect a 
beginning of an estrangement between him and his suc- 
cessor, Tiberius. 

The household in which these first seeds of tragedy 
slowly germinated was, in the year 38 b.c, one of great 
simplicity and sobriety. They lived in the comparatively 
small house in which Octavian had been born, and Livia 
adopted his plain ways with ease and dignity. In that age 
of deadly luxury, when the veins of Rome were swollen 
with the first flush of parasitic wealth, Octavian and Livia 
were content with a prudent adaptation of the old Roman 
ideal to the new age. The noble guests whom Octavian 
brought to his table found that his simple taste shrank, not 
only from the peacocks' brains and nightingales' tongues 
which were served in their own more sumptuous banquets, 
but even from the pheasant, the boar, and the other 



i6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

ordinary luxuries of a patrician dinner. Rough bread, 
cream cheese, fish, and common fruit composed his cus- 
tomary meal. Often was he seen, as he came home in his 
litter from some fatiguing public business, such as the 
administration of justice, to munch a little bread and fruit, 
like some humble countryman. Of wine he drank little, 
and he never adopted the enervating nightly carousal which 
was draining away the strength of Rome. While wealthy 
senators and knights prolonged the hours of entertainment 
after the evening meal, and hired sinuous Syrian dancing 
girls and nude bejewelled boys and salacious mimes to fire 
the dull eyes of their guests, as they lay back, sated, on 
the couches of silk and roses, under fine showers of 
perfume from the roof, sipping choice wine cooled with the 
snow of the Atlas or the Alps, Octavian withdrew to his 
study, after a frugal supper, to write his diary, dictate his 
generous correspondence, and enjoy the poets who were 
inaugurating the golden age of Latin letters. When there 
were guests, he provided fitting dishes and music for them, 
but often retired to his study when the meal was over. 
After seven hours' sleep in the most modest of chambers he 
was ready to resume his daily round. 

Since Octavian retained these sober habits to the end of 
his life, years after they could have had any diplomatic aim, 
it is remarkable that so many writers have regarded them 
as an artful screen of his ambition. Nor can we think 
diff'erently of Livia. If Octavian presents a healthy con- 
trast to the sordid sensuality of some of his successors, his 
wife contrasts no less luminously with later Empresses, and 
is no less unjustly accused of cunning. How far she 
developed ambition in later years we shall consider later. 
In the fullness of his manhood, at least, she was content to 
be the wife of Octavian. With her own hands she helped 
to spin, weave, and sew his everyday garments. She 
carefully reared her two boys, tended the somev^^hat 
delicate health of Octavian, and cultivated that nice degree 
of affability which kept her husband affectionate and the 
husbands of other noble dames respectful. Dio would have 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 17 

us believe that her most useful quality was her willingness 
to overlook the genial irregularities of Octavian ; but Dio 
betrays an excessive eagerness to detect frailties in his 
heroes and heroines. We have no serious evidence that 
Octavian continued the loose ways of his youth after he 
married Livia. The plainest and soundest reading of the 
chronicle is that they lived happily, and retained a great 
affection for each other, even when fate began to rain its 
blows on their ill-starred house. 

But before we reach those tragic days, we have to 
consider briefly the years in which Octavian established 
his power. His first step after his marriage with Livia 
was to destroy the power of the Pompeians. Livia 
followed the struggle anxiously from her country villa a 
few miles from Rome. Sextus Pompeius was experienced 
in naval warfare, and, as repeated messages came of blunder 
and defeat on the part of Octavian's forces, she trembled 
with alarm. Her confidence was restored by one of the 
abundant miracles of the time. An eagle one day swooped 
down on a chicken which had just picked up a sprig of 
laurel in the farm-yard. The eagle clumsily dropped the 
chicken, with the laurel, near Livia, and so plain an omen 
could not be misinterpreted. Rumour soon had it that 
the eagle had laid the laurel-bearing chick gently at Livia's 
feet. As in all such cases, the sceptic of a later generation 
was silenced with material proof. The chicken became the 
mother of a brood which for many years spread the repute 
of the village through southern Italy; the sprig of laurel 
became a tree, and in time furnished the auspicious twigs 
of which the crowns of triumphing generals were woven. 

Whether it was by the will of Jupiter, or by the rein- 
forcement of a hundred and fifty ships which he received 
from Antony, Octavian did eventually win, and, to the 
delight of Rome, cleared the route by which the corn-ships 
came from Africa. Only two men now remained between 
Octavian and supreme power — the two who formed with 
him the Triumvirate which ruled the Republic. The first, 
Lepidus, was soon convicted of maladministration in his 



i8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

African province, and was transferred to the innocent 
duties of the pontificate, under Octavian's eyes, at Rome. 
Octavian added the province of Africa to his half of the 
Roman world, and found himself in command of forty-five 
legions and six hundred vessels. Fresh honours were 
awarded him by the Senate, in which his devoted friend 
Maecenas, who foresaw the advantage to Rome of his 
rule, was working for him. 

Then Octavian entered on his final conflict with Mark 
Antony. I have already protested against the plausible 
view that Octavian was pursuing a definite ambition under 
all his appearance of simplicity. Circumstances conspired 
first to give him power, and then to give him the appear- 
ance of a thirst for it. He really did not destroy Antony, 
however : Antony destroyed himself. The apology that 
has been made for Cleopatra in recent times only enhances 
Antony's guilt. It is said that she used all that elusive 
fascination of her person, of which ancient writers find 
it difficult to convey an impression, all her wealth and 
her wit, only to benumb the hand that Rome stretched 
out to seize her beloved land. The theory is not in the 
least inconsistent with the facts, and it is more pleasant 
to believe that the last representative of the great free 
womanhood of ancient Egypt sacrificed her person and her 
wealth on the altar of patriotism than that her dalliance 
with Antony was but a languorous and selfish indulgence 
in an hour of national peril. But if it be true that Cleopatra 
was the last Egyptian patriot, Antony was all the more 
clearly a traitor to Rome. The quarrel does not concern 
us. Octavian induced the Senate to make war on Egypt ; 
and we can well believe that when, in a herald's garb, he 
read the declaration of war at the door of the temple of 
Bellona, the thought of his despised sister added warmth 
to his phrases. The pale, patient face and outraged virtue 
of Octavia daily branded Antony afresh in the eyes of 
Rome. 

Livia and Antonia followed the swift course of the last 
struggle from Rome. They heard of the meeting of the 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 19 

fleets off Actium, the victorious swoop of Octavian, the 
flight of Antony and Cleopatra. What followed would 
hardly be known to Livia. It is said that Cleopatra 
offered to betray Antony to Octavian, and such an offer 
is in entire harmony with the patriotic theory of her 
conduct. While his able but ill-regulated rival, deserted 
by his forces, drew near the edge of the abyss, Octavian 
visited Cleopatra in her palace. Her seductive form was 
displayed on a silken couch, and from the slit-like eyes the 
dangerous fire caressed the young conqueror. Cleopatra 
probably relied on Octavian's weakness, but his sensuous 
impulses were held in check by a harder thought. He 
felt that he must have this glorious creature to adorn his 
triumph at Rome. Cleopatra saw that she had failed, and 
she went sadly, with a last dignity, before the throne of 
Osiris. Octavian returned to Rome with the immense 
treasures of Egypt, to enjoy the triumph I have already 
described and to await the purple. 

The domestic life of Livia and Octavian lost none of its 
plainness after the attainment of supreme power. Some 
time after the Senate had (27 b.c.) strengthened his position 
by inventing for him the title of "Augustus" — a title by 
which he is generally, but improperly, described in history 
after that date^ — he removed from the small house which 
his father had left him to a larger mansion, built by the 
orator Hortensius, on the Palatine. This was burned 
down in the year 6 B.C., and the citizens built a new 
palace for Livia and Octavian by public subscription. At 
the Emperor's command the contribution of each was 
limited to one denarius. If we may trust the archaeo- 
logists, it was modest in size, but of admirable taste, 
especially in the marble lining of its interior. On one 
side it looked down, over the steep slope of the hill, on the 
colonnaded space, the Forum, in which the life of Rome 
centred. On the other side it faced a group of public 

' Improperly, because it is not a distinctive name, but common to the 
emperors. Livia and Octavia received the title of "Augusta" a few years 
later, yet even Livia is rarely known by it. 



20 THE EMPRESSES OF RCBIE 

buildings, raised by Octavian, which impressed the citizens 
with his liberality in the public service. The splendid 
temple of Apollo, the public library and other buildings, 
adorned with the most exquisite works of art that his 
provincial expeditions had brought to Rome, stood in fine 
contrast to his own plain mansion, of which the proudest 
decoration was the faded wreath over the door — the 
Victoria Cross of the Roman world — which bore witness 
that he had saved the life of a citizen. 

In this modest palace Livia reared her two children in 
the finer traditions of the old Republic, while Octavian 
made the long journeys into the provinces which filled 
many years after his attainment of power. Livia was no 
narrow conservative. She took her full share in the decent 
distractions of patrician life, and, like many other noble 
women of the period, she built temples and other edifices 
of more obvious usefulness to the public. A provincial 
town took the name Liviada in her honour. We have many 
proofs that she was consulted on public affairs by Octavian, 
and exercised a discreet and beneficent influence on him. 
One of the anecdotes collected by later writers tells that 
she one day met a group of naked men on the road. It 
is likely that they were innocent workers or soldiers in 
the heat, and not the *' band of lascivious nobles " which 
prurient writers have made them out to be. However, 
Octavian impetuously demanded their heads when she 
told him, and Livia saved them with the remark that, " in 
the eyes of a decent woman they were no more offensive 
than a group of statues." On another occasion she dis- 
suaded Octavian from executing a young noble for con- 
spiracy. At her suggestion the noble was brought to the 
Emperor's private room. When, instead of the merited 
sentence of death, Cinna received only a kindly admonition, 
an off'er of Octavian's friendship, and further promotion, 
he was completely disarmed and won. We shall see further 
proof that the wise and humane counsels of Livia con- 
tributed not a little to the peace and prosperity which Rome 
enjoyed in its golden age. 




LIVIA AS CERES 

STATUE IN THE LOUVRE 



THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 21 

For it was in truth an age of gold in comparison with 
the previous hundred years and the centuries to come. 
The flames of civil war had scorched the Republic time 
after time. The best soldiers of Rome were dying out ; 
the best leaders were perishing in an ignoble contest of 
ambitions. Corruption spread, like a cancerous growth, 
through all ranks of the citizens of Rome, and far into the 
provinces. The white-robed {candidati) seekers of office in 
the city now relied on the purchase of votes by expert and 
recognized agents. Hundreds of thousands of the citizens 
lived parasitically on the State, or on the wealthy men to 
whom they sold their votes, and from whom they had free 
food and free entertainments. The loathsome spectacle 
was seen of vast crowds of strong idle men, boasting of 
their dignity as citizens of Rome, pressing to the appointed 
steps for their daily doles of corn. Large numbers of them 
could hardly earn an occasional coin to buy a cup of wine, 
a game of dice, or a visit to the lupaiiaria in the Subura. 
By means of other agents the wealthy refilled their coffers 
by extortion in the provinces, and paraded at Rome a 
luxury that was often as puerile as it was criminal, Rome, 
once so sober and virile, now shone on the face of the 
earth like some parasitic flower, of deadly beauty, on the 
face of a forest. 

No man, perhaps, could have saved Rome from destruc- 
tion, but Octavian did much to clear its veins of the poison, 
and its chronicle would have run very differently if he had 
not been succeeded by a Caligula, a Claudius, and a Nero. 
He chastised injustice in the provinces, purified the ad- 
ministration of justice at Rome, fought against the growing 
practices of artificial sterility and artificial vice, and genially 
pressed on the senators his own ideal of sober public 
service. From his mansion on the Palatine he looked 
down without remorse on the idle chatterers in the Forum, 
from whom he had withdrawn the power, of which they 
still boasted, of ruling their spreading empire. Nor were 
there many, amongst those who looked up to his unpre- 
tentious palace on the edge of the cliff, who did not feel 



22 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

that they had gained by the sale of their tarnished demo- 
cracy. There was more than literal truth in Octavian's 
boast that he had found Rome a city of brick, and had left 
it a city of marble. 

Yet all the augurs and soothsayers of Rome failed to 
see the swift and terrible issue that would come of this 
seemingly happy change. Corrupt and repellent as demo- 
cracy had become, monarchy was presently to exhibit 
spectacles which would surpass all the horrors of its civil 
wars, and outshame the sordid reaches of its avarice. The 
new race of rulers was to descend so low as to use its 
imperial power to shatter what remained of old Roman 
virtue, and to embellish vice with its richest awards. 
From the sobriety and public spirit of Octavian we pass 
quickly to the sombre melancholy of Tiberius, the wanton 
brutality of Caligula, the impotent sensuality of Claudius, 
the mincing folly of Nero, and the alternating gluttony and 
cruelty of Domitian, before we come to the second honest 
effort to avert the fate of Rome. From the genial virtue 
of Livia we are led to contemplate the dissolute gaieties of 
Julia, the cold ambition of Agrippina, the robust vulgarity 
of Caesonia, the infectious vice of Messalina, and the insipid 
frippery of Poppaea. Had there been one syllable of truth 
in the divine messages which augurs and Chaldseans saw 
in every movement of nature, not even the beneficent rule 
of Octavian would have lured men to sacrifice even the 
effigy of power that remained to them, and that they had 
lightly sold for a measure of corn and the bloody orgies of 
the amphitheatre. 



CHAPTER II 

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 

IN tracing the further career of Livia we enter upon 
the opening acts of the tragedy of the Caesars, and 
we have to consider carefully if there be any truth 
in the charge that Livia herself initiated the long series 
of murders that now make a trail of blood over the annals 
of Rome. With the coming of the Empire we more rarely 
find legion pitted against legion in the horrors of civil 
war, but we have nerveless ambition stooping to the 
despicable aid of the poisoner, autocracy paralysing the 
best of the nobility with its murderous suspicions, and 
folly growing more foolish with the increasing splendour 
of the imperial house. We already know that the germs 
of this disease were found in the quiet home of Livia 
and Octavian on the Palatine. Scribonia had received 
her letter of divorce a few days after the birth of her 
daughter Julia. As Livia bore no direct heir to the 
Emperor, while Julia became the mother of many children, 
we have at once the promise of a dramatic struggle for the 
succession. When we further learn that the strain of 
Imperial blood, which takes its rise in Julia, is thickly 
tainted with disease, we are prepared for a bloody and 
unscrupulous conflict. And when we reflect that on this 
unstable pivot the vast Empire will turn for many genera- 
tions, we begin to understand the larger tragedy of the 
fall of Rome. 

Let us first glance at the interior of the modest house- 
hold on the Palatine. Besides Livia and Octavian, with 

23 



24 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

whom we are now familiar, there is Octavia, sister of 
the Emperor and divorced wife of Mark Antony, a gentle 
lady with the matronly virtues of the time when a Roman 
could slay his wife or daughter for irregular conduct. 
With her were her children, Marcellus and Marcella, of 
whom we shall hear much. Then there were Livia's two 
sons — the elder, Tiberius, a tall, silent, moody youth, with 
little care to please ; the younger, Drusus, a handsome, 
buoyant, fair-headed boy, threatening the elder's birthright. 
Octavian closely watched the education of the boys. He 
taught them to write on the wax-faced tablets in the fine 
script on which he prided himself, kept them beside him 
at table, and drove them in his chariot about public 
business. 

But the most interesting and fateful figure in the group 
was Julia. Octavian had removed her at an early age 
from the care of Scribonia, and adopted her in the palace. 
She learned to spin and weave, and helped to make the 
garments of the family, under the severe eyes of Livia 
and Octavia. The Emperor was charmed with the pretty 
and lively girl, and would make a second Livia of her. 
Knowing well, if only from his own youth, the vice and 
folly that abounded in those mansions on the hills of Rome, 
and roared in its dimly-lighted valleys by night, he kept 
her apart. None of the young fops who drove their 
chariots madly out by the Flaminian Gate, and sipped 
their wine after supper to the prurient jokes of mimes, 
were suffered to approach her. And, not for the first 
or last time in history, the veiling of the young eyes had 
an effect quite contrary to that intended. A Roman girl 
became a woman at fourteen, a mother at fifteen. At 
that early age, in the year 25 B.C., Julia was married to 
her cousin Marcellus, who was then seventeen, Marcellus 
was so clearly a possible successor to the throne that 
courtiers hung about him, and taught him the art of 
princely living. The doors of the hidden world were 
opened, and the tender eyes of Julia were dazed. 

The authorities are careless in chronology, and we 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 25 

may decline to believe that Julia at once entered on the 
riotous ways which led her to the abyss. Her marriage 
concerns us in a very different respect. All the writers 
who adopt the view that Livia was a hard and un- 
scrupulous woman — a view that Tacitus must have taken 
from the memoirs of her rival's granddaughter, the Empress 
Agrippina, which were made public in his time — consider 
that this marriage of Julia and Marcellus marks the 
beginning of her career of crime. She is supposed to 
have been alarmed at the marriage of two direct descend- 
ants of Caesar, seeing that she herself had no child by 
Octavian. Most certainly she was ambitious for her elder 
son. The boy whom she had clasped to her breast, when 
she fled along the roads of Campania and through the 
burning forests of Greece, was now a clever and studious 
youth, and she wished Octavian to adopt him. Un- 
fortunately, Tiberius was of a moody and solitary nature, 
and was easily displaced in Octavian's affection by the 
handsome and popular Marcellus and the beautiful and 
witty Julia. 

The first cloud appeared in the year 23 B.C. Octavian 
fell seriously ill, and Livia's hope of securing the succession 
for her son was troubled by two formidable competitors. 
One was Marcellus, the other was Octavian's friend and 
ablest general, M. V. Agrippa. He was of poor origin, 
but of commanding ability and character, and was suspected 
of entertaining a design to restore the Republic. He was 
married to Marcella, and had some contempt for the spoiled 
boy, her brother Marcellus — a contempt which Marcellus 
repaid with petulance and rancour. Octavian recovered, 
sent Agrippa on an important errand to the East, and 
made Marcellus ^dile of the city. Marcellus was winning, 
the eager observers thought, when suddenly he fell seriously 
ill and died. The death was so opportune for Tiberius 
that we cannot wonder that a faint whisper of poison went 
through Rome when his ashes were laid in the lofty marble 
tower that Octavian had built in the meadows by the Tiber. 
But we need not linger over this first charge against Livia. 



26 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Even Dio, who is no sceptic in regard to rumours which 
defame Empresses, hesitates to press on us so airy and 
improbable a myth. It was a hot and pestilential summer, 
and Marcellus seems to have contracted fever by remain- 
ing too long at his post, before going to Baiae on the 
coast. 

The death of Marcellus, far from promoting the cause 
of Tiberius, brought a more formidable obstacle in his 
way. Octavian sent for Agrippa, and directed him to 
divorce Marcella and wed Julia. The general, who was 
in his forty-second year, thought it immaterial which of 
the two young princesses shared his bed, and Octavia 
consented to the divorce of her daughter — as some con- 
jecture, to thwart Livia's design. To the delight of 
Octavian the union of robust manhood and amorous young 
womanhood was fruitful. During the ten years of their 
marriage Julia gave birth to three sons and two daughters. 
Happily unconscious of the tragedies which were to close 
the careers of these children in his own lifetime, Octavian 
welcomed them with great enthusiasm. During his whole 
reign he was engaged in a futile effort to induce or compel 
the better families of Rome to take a larger share in the 
peopling of the Empire. When he penalized celibacy, 
they defeated him by contracting marriages with the 
intention of seeking an immediate divorce. When he 
made adultery a public crime, there were noblewomen 
— few in number, it is true ; the facts are often exaggerated 
— who enrolled themselves on the list of shame, and noble- 
men who took on the degrading rank of gladiators, in 
order to escape the penalties. He created a guild of 
honour for the mothers of at least three children ; but the 
distinction seemed to the ladies of Rome to be an in- 
adequate reward for so onerous an accomplishment, and 
they scoffed when Livia was enrolled in the guild, though 
the only child she had conceived of Octavian had never 
seen the light. 

Far greater, however, was the amusement of Rome 
when Octavian held up Julia as a model of maternity. 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 27 

and ostentatiously fondled her babies in public. A coarse 
and witty reply that she is said to have made, when some 
one asked her how it was that all her children so closely 
resembled her husband, was then circulated in Roman 
society, and is preserved in Macrobius.^ Beautiful, lively, 
and cultivated, the young girl had exchanged with delight 
the dull homeliness of her father's mansion for the rose- 
crowned banquets of her new world. Her marriage with 
Agrippa restrained her gaiety for a time, but her husband 
was often summoned to distant provinces, and she was 
left to her dissolute friends. Octavian was curiously 
blind to her conduct, but when Agrippa was compelled 
to undertake a lengthy mission in the East, he ordered 
Julia to accompany him. The journey would not im- 
probably foster her vicious tendencies. There is truth 
in the old adage that all light came to Europe from the 
East, but it is hardly less true that darkness came to 
Rome from the East. Julia would not be ignorant how 
the ancient Roman puritanism had been corrupted by the 
introduction of Eastern habits and types — the poisoner, 
the Chaldaean astrologer, the Syrian dancer, the eunuch, 
the cultivated Greek slave, the priests of orgiastic Eastern 
cults. A mind like hers would seek to penetrate the depths 
from which these types had emerged. In Greece she 
would find the remains of its perfumed vices lingering 
at the foot of its decaying monuments. In Antioch there 
would not be wanting freedwomen to gratify her curiosity 
in regard to its unnatural excesses and the world-famed 
license of its groves. In Judaea she was long and splen- 
didly entertained at the court of Herod, a monarch with 
ten wives and concubines innumerable. 

They returned to Rome in the year 13, and in the 
following year Agrippa died of gout, and Julia was 
free. One of the most surprising features of her wild 
Career — one that would make us hesitate to admit 
the charges against her, if hesitation were possible — 
is that Livia was either ignorant of her more serious 
1 " Non nisi plena nave tollo vectorem." 



28 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

misdeeds, or unable to convince Octavian of them. Livia 
would hardly spare her, as Julia was inflaming Octavian's 
dislike for Tiberius. Refined, sensitive, and studious, 
the young man avoided the boisterous amusements in 
which other young patricians spent their ample leisure, 
and his cold melancholy made him distasteful to them. 
One of the Roman writers would have us believe that 
Julia made love to him during the life of Agrippa, and 
that she incited Octavian against him in revenge for his 
rejection of her advances. The story is improbable. We 
need only suppose that Julia, in speaking of Tiberius, 
used the disdainful language which was common to her 
friends. Neither Livia nor Tiberius seems to have 
attempted to open the Emperor's eyes to Julia's conduct. 
Octavian disliked her luxurious ways, but was blind to 
her vices, though the names of her lovers were on the 
lips of all. One day Octavian scolded her for having a 
crowd of fast young nobles about her, and commended 
to her the staid example of Livia. She disarmed him 
with the laughing reply that, when she was old, her 
companions would be as old as those of the Empress. 
One writer says that Octavian compelled her to give up 
a too sumptuous palace which she occupied. One is 
more disposed to believe the story that, when he remon- 
strated with her for her luxurious ways, she replied : 
' My father may forget that he is Caesar, but I cannot 
forget that I am Caesar's daughter." 

In spite of their mutual aversion Octavian now ordered 
Tiberius to marry her. He was already married to 
Vipsania, the virtuous and affectionate daughter of Agrippa, 
and this enforced separation from one whom he loved 
with an ardour that was fading from Roman marriage, 
and union with one who contrasted with Vipsania as the 
wild flaming poppy contrasts with the lily, further soured 
and embittered him. We may dismiss in a very few 
words his relations with the woman who ought to have 
been the second Empress of Rome. After a few years 
spent, as a rule, in distant frontier wars, he returned to 




JULIA 

BUST IK THE MUSEUM CHIARAMONTI 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 29 

Rome in the year 6 B.C., to find that his wife had passed 
the last bounds of decency and Octavian was as blind 
as ever. In intense disgust, and in spite of his mother's 
entreaties, he begged the Emperor's permission to spend 
some years in literary and scientific studies at Rhodes, 
Not daring to open the eyes of Octavian to the true 
character of his daughter, he had to bow to his anger 
and disdain, and seek consolation in the calm mysteries 
of the planets and the fine sentiments of Greek tragedians. 

Julia now cast aside the last traces of restraint. A 
half-dozen of the young nobles of Rome are associated 
with her in the chronicles, and, gossipy and unreliable as 
the records are, in this case the issue of the story disposes 
us to believe the charges. Round such a repute as hers 
legends were bound to grow, and the conscientious bio- 
grapher must be reserved in giving details, Dio tells us, 
for instance, that she expected her lovers to put crowns, 
for each success she permitted them to attain, at the foot 
of the statue of Marsyas — a public statue, at the feet of 
which Roman lawyers were wont to place a crown when 
they had won a case. However that may be, it is certain 
that in the nightly dissipation of Rome, when plebeian 
offenders sought the darkness of the Milvian Bridge, or 
wantoned in the taverns and brothels of the Subura, 
Julia's party was one of the boldest and most conspicuous. 
Not content with the riotous supper, which it was now 
the fashion to prolong by lamp-light, in perfumed cham- 
bers, until late hours of the night, Julia and her friends 
went out into the streets, and caroused in the very 
tribunal in the Forum — the Rostra, a platform decorated 
with the prows of captured vessels — from which her 
father made known his Imperial decisions.^ 

^ Writers often convey the impression that Julia indulged even her 
most vicious inclinations in the Rostra, but Dio merely speaks of "revel- 
ling " and " carousing " : wore Koi ev rrj dyopa koX tn' avTov ye tov ^rjixaros 
Ka}^^d(fLv vvKTus Koi avfinipeiv. The emptying of a cup of Falernian wine in 
the Rostra, on some occasion of especial devilry or intoxication, may be 
all that is meant. 



30 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

The thunder of the Imperial anger scattered this licen- 
tious band some time in the second year before Christ. 
In the earlier part of the year Octavian had entertained 
Rome with one of the thrilling spectacles which he often 
provided. To celebrate the dedication of a new temple 
of Mars, which he had built, he had the Flaminian Circus 
flooded, gave the people a mock naval battle, and had 
thirteen crocodiles slain by the gladiators. Julia had 
hoodwinked the Emperor so long that she and her friends 
seem to have abandoned all restraint, and their adventures 
came to the knowledge of the Emperor. 

The charges against Julia must have been beyond 
cavil, since Octavian, who loved her deeply, at once 
yielded her to the course of justice. A charge of con- 
spiracy was made out against her companions. One of 
the young nobles killed himself, and the rest were banished. 
Julia was convicted of adultery — the evil that her father 
had fought for ten years — and from the glitter of Rome 
she was roughly conducted to the barren rock-island of 
Pandateria (Ponza), in the Gulf of Gaeta. In that narrow 
and depressing jail, with no female attendants, no wine 
and no finery, accompanied only by her unhappy mother, 
the fascinating young princess spent five years, looking 
with anguish over the blue water toward the faint out- 
line of the hills of Italy, or southward toward those rose- 
strewn waters of Baiae, where she had dreamed away so 
many brilliant summers. Rome, touched with pity for 
the stricken woman, implored Octavian to forgive her ; 
and when he swore that fire and water should meet 
before he pardoned her, the people naively flung burning 
torches into the Tiber. Hearing, after a few years, that 
there was a plot to release her, Octavian had her removed 
to a more secure prison in Calabria. There she dragged 
out her miserable life until her father died, and Tiberius 
came to the throne. When he in turn refused to release 
her, she sank slowly into the peace of death. 

There is no charge against Livia in connexion with 
this tragic fate of Julia, but another possible rival of 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 31 

Tiberius had disappeared during these years, and there 
is the usual vague accusation that the Empress assisted 
the action of nature. Drusus, her younger son, died in 
the year 9 B.C., and Livia is charged with sacrificing him 
to her affection for her elder son. The charge is pre- 
posterous. Drusus had, it is true, been much more 
popular than Tiberius at Rome. His genial and engaging 
manner gave him a great advantage over the retiring and 
almost sullen Tiberius. But the brothers loved each 
other deeply, and when Tiberius, who was making a tour 
in the north of Gaul, heard that Drusus was dangerously 
ill in Germany, he at once rode four hundred miles on 
horseback, and held Drusus in his arms in his last hour. 
Livia was at Ticinum, in the north of Italy, with Octavian 
when the news reached them. That either Livia or 
Tiberius — for both are accused — should have in any way 
promoted the death of Drusus is a frivolous suggestion. 
The epitomist of Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, describe 
the death as natural. Drusus was thrown and injured by 
a frantic horse. The libel that his death was in some 
mysterious way accelerated may have been set afoot b}'^ 
his partisans. It was generally believed that he favoured 
a restoration of the Republic, and the corrupt officials 
who, at his death, lost their faint hope of returning to 
the days of peculation and bribery, may have begun the 
charge. No evidence is offered for it. Livia and Octavian 
accompanied the remains to Rome with great sorrow. 
Seneca says that the Empress was so distressed that she 
summoned one of the Stoic philosophers to console her. 
The next charge against Livia requires a more careful 
examination. By the beginning of the present era, when 
the poor health of Octavian gave occasion for many specu- 
lations as to the succession, there were only two rivals to 
the chances of Tiberius. These were the elder sons of Julia, 
and Livia must have reflected gloomily on their fortune. 
While Tiberius remained in retirement at Rhodes the 
young princes were idolized by Octavian and by the people. 
Tiberius had proposed to return to Rome after the banish- 



32 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

ment of Julia, but Octavian peevishly told him to remain 
in Greece. Every astrologer in Rome must have read in 
the planets that either Caius or Lucius was born to the 
purple. They were spoiled by Octavian, enriched with 
premature honours, and, glittering in silver trappings, 
appeared in the spectacles as " Princes of the youth of 
Rome." Let those youths be removed from the scene by 
any accident, and so prurient a city as Rome will be bound 
to discover some insidious action on the part of Livia ; and 
later writers, brooding over a chronicle in which ambition 
leads freely to the most brutal murders, will be disposed to 
believe her guilty. 

It is somewhat surprising to find more recent writers 
caught by the fallacy. We are not puzzled when the 
scandal-loving Serviez opens his chapter on Livia with a 
glowing enumeration of her virtues, adopts nearly every 
libel against her as he proceeds, and closes with a very 
dark estimate of her character ; but we are entitled to 
expect more discrimination in Merivale. Even Mr. Tarver, 
in his recent "Tiberius the Tyrant" (1902), does much 
injustice to the mother in vindicating the son. He speaks 
of her as " hard, avaricious, and a lover of power," and, 
without the least evidence — indeed, against all probability — 
suggests that it was Livia who urged Octavian to keep 
Tiberius in retirement at Rhodes. He makes Livia hostile 
to Tiberius in favour of Julia's sons, on the ground that she 
would find them more pliant than Tiberius. Every other 
writer suggests precisely the contrar}^ They make her 
murder Julia's sons in the interest of Tiberius. 

The death of the younger son, Lucius, is obscure. He 
was sent on a mission to Spain in the year 2 a.d., and died 
at Marseilles on the way. Since the only ground for the 
rumour that he was poisoned is the indubitable fact that he 
died, we need not delay in considering it. Octavian then 
sent the elder brother Caius on a mission into Syria under 
the care of his old tutor Lollius. His counsellor unhappily 
died in the East, and the young prince was left to the vicious 
companions who regarded him as the future dispenser of 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 33 

Imperial favours. He fell into Oriental ways, and was at 
length (a.d. 3) treacherously wounded by a Syrian patriot. 
Instead of returning to Rome, he remained in the unhealthy 
atmosphere of the East, indulged in its habits of languor 
and vice, and died eighteen months after the death of his 
brother. There is no obscurity about his death. It is 
beyond question that he was severely wounded by a Syrian. 
But the deaths of the two brothers happened so opportunely 
for Tiberius that one cannot wonder at the suspicion, in 
certain minds, that Livia had had the youths poisoned. 
Nothing more than this vague rumour is given us by Tacitus, 
Dio, Suetonius, or Pliny ; and it is from a sheer pruriency 
of romance that later writers, like Serviez, have accepted 
and emphasized the suspicion recorded in the Roman 
historians. Not on such slender grounds can we be 
asked to sacrifice the conception of Livia's character 
which is forced on us by the plainer facts of her career. 
The youths were delicate ; Caius, at least, had under- 
mined his frail constitution by luxury, if not by vice; 
and the Roman world harboured death in a hundred 
forms. 

If we still hesitate to choose between the artifice of 
Livia and the unaided action of natural causes in this 
removal of the 'obstacles to the advancement of Tiberius, 
we have only to glance at the fate of the rest of Julia's 
children. The third son, Agrippa, was as robust in body 
as his brothers were weak, but he was defective in mind 
and devoid of moral control. His boorish conduct as a boy 
gave great pain to Livia and Octavia, and his great physical 
strength broke out in uncontrollable gusts of passion. In 
his adolescence he readily adopted the worst vices that 
Rome could teach him, and Octavian was obliged to con- 
demn him to imprisonment and exile. There remained the 
two daughters, Julia and Agrippina. The younger, the 
sanest of Julia's children, lived to intrigue for power, and 
greatly to embarrass Livia's later years ; though we shall 
find the same tragic fate befalling her after the death of the 
Empress, who protected her. The elder, Julia, was banished 
3 



34 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

(a.d. 9) for incest, and, like her mother, lacking the courage 
or virtue to end her shame as the nobler Romans did, she 
protracted her miserable life for twenty years, her hard lot 
only alleviated by the charity of Livia. 

Fate had removed every possible competitor to the 
succession of Tiberius, fie returned to Rome, and his 
judicious and sedulous activity removed the last traces of 
the Emperor's resentment. Peace returned, after many 
years of storm, to the mansion on the Palatine. But 
Octavian had suffered profoundly from those terrible and 
persistent storms. The Rome of his manhood was gone. All 
his friends and counsellors had disappeared, and the future 
of his people filled him with apprehension. The patrician 
stock was decaying from luxury and vice; the ordinary 
citizens clamoured for free food and free entertainment with 
a blind disregard of the laws of national health. He shrank 
from the public gaze, and leaned affectionately on Livia 
and Tiberius. 

In the year 14 he remained at Rome in the early heat 
of the summer, and became seriously ill. Livia and 
Tiberius went down with him to the coast, where he 
rallied, and some pleasant days were spent on the island 
of Capreae (Capri), which he had bought. They passed to 
the mainland, where Tiberius left them, but he was soon 
recalled by a message from his mother that the Emperor 
was sinking. On the last morning of his life Octavian 
dressed with unaccustomed care, and summoned his friends 
to his bedside. Was Rome tranquil on receiving the news 
of his dangerous condition ? Did they approve of his 
conduct and accomplishments ? They gave him the assur- 
ance he desired, and were dismissed. Could they have 
foreseen the line of rulers who were to stain the purple 
robe with blood, and load it with shame, for so many 
decades to come, they would have wept. The last moments 
were for Livia. He died kissing her, and murmuring : 
" Be mindful of our marriage, Livia. Farewell." So ended, 
peacefully, a union that had lasted fifty-two years in a city 
where divorce was as lightly esteemed as marriage. There 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 35 

can be little serious doubt about the character of the first 
Empress of Rome. 

Livia probably concealed the death of Octavian until 
Tiberius arrived from Dalmatia. A report was given out 
that Tiberius arrived in time to receive the last injunctions 
of the Emperor. This may be doubted without any serious 
reflection on her character ; if, indeed, it was she, and not 
Tiberius, who spread the report. There were grave fears — 
well-founded fears, as we shall see — that a plot, in the 
interest of corruption, had been framed to prevent the 
succession of Tiberius. In the coolness of the night, so as 
to avoid the intense heat of August, they bore the remains 
with great pomp to the capital. There, on a bed of ivory 
and purple, preceded by wax effigies of Octavian and of 
earlier rulers of Rome, the body was carried to the temple 
of Julius, where Tiberius read a funeral oration. The 
cortege went on to the Field of Mars, by the Tiber, through 
lines of black-draped citizens. The pile was fired, and 
zealous eyes saw the soul of Octavian mount toward 
heaven in the outward form of an eagle. 

Livia, on approved custom, remained by the sacred 
ashes for five days, and then returned to face the new life 
which opened for her. With the especially wild suggestion 
that she had accelerated the death of her husband we may 
disdain to concern ourselves. It was owing to her devoted 
care that the ailing and delicate Octavian had lived to old 
age. But a second libel in connexion with the death of 
Octavian must be briefly considered. 

The apprehension, or the secret information, of the 
dying Emperor was correct. No sooner was his death 
announced than a servant of the imprisoned son of Julia 
hurried to the coast, and set sail for the island of Planasia, 
with the intention of bringing Agrippa to Rome as a 
candidate for the purple. He arrived only to find a bleed- 
ing corpse. The centurion in charge had dispatched 
Agrippa as soon as the Emperor's death was made known 
to him. 

Who gave the order for this execution ? One cannot 



36 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

call it murder, for Agrippa was unfit to be restored to 
society, and any attempt to raise him to the throne would 
have been disastrous to Rome. The authorities, as usual, 
merely give us the rumours that circulated at the time, 
and leave us to choose between Octavian, Livia, and 
Tiberius. We can have little difficulty in choosing. It 
would be so natural for either Octavian or Tiberius to 
crush the conspiracy by executing Agrippa that the intro- 
duction of Livia is superfluous. Most probably Octavian 
had left directions with Agrippa's custodian. There is a 
curious story, in several contradictory versions, but credible 
in substance, that Octavian in his later years paid a secret 
visit to Planasia, to see personally what Agrippa's real 
condition was. Quite the most plausible theory is that, 
after personal verification of his madness, Octavian felt it 
best for Rome, and not inhuman to Agrippa, to have him 
put to death as soon as the question of succession was 
opened. 

We come to the last phase of Livia's career. Tiberius 
was now a tall, handsome man, though slightly disfigured, 
with long fair hair and features strangely delicate for one 
of his exceptional physical strength. A better soldier than 
his predecessor, and not an inept statesman, he was well 
enough fitted to wield the power which Octavian had 
virtually bequeathed to him. But a retiring disposition, 
an unhappy youth, and long years of study, had made him 
shrink from the society of any but scholars, and he long 
hesitated to ascend the throne to which the Senate invited 
him. We have not good ground to regard this reluctance 
as feigned. At last he consented, and the critics of Livia 
would have it that her ambition now passed such bounds 
as had been set to it by the ability of Octavian. We may 
freely admit that she looked forward to being closely 
associated in power with the son whose career she had 
followed with such devotion and helpfulness. On the 
other hand, we shall see how advantageous to the State 
her influence was ; the evils that at once begin to darken 
the life of Rome when Tiberius rejects her counsels 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 37 

will plainly show this. Nor is there any evidence that 
she sought power from any other motive than the good 
of the State. She might take pride in what she did, 
and even exaggerate it, but such a pride is not incon- 
sistent with the view that she was ever gentle, humane, 
and generous. 

The first searching test of her character occurs a few 
years after the accession of Tiberius. As the news of the 
death of Octavian slowly travelled over the Empire, there 
were mutinous movements among the legions in many 
provinces. In Lower Germany, especially, the troops 
considered that their commander, Germanicus, the nephew 
of Tiberius, was entitled to the purple, and they asked him to 
lead them to Rome. He was a handsome, engaging young 
general, of imperial blood, with moderate ability and much 
conceit, and had won the regard of the soldiers by visiting 
the sick and wounded, advancing their pay out of his own 
purse, and other popular acts. He was married to Julia's 
daughter, Agrippina, who lived in camp with him. They 
dressed their little son Caius in soldier's costume, and his 
quaint appearance in miniature military boots won for him 
the pet-name Caligula ("Little-boots") by which he is 
known to history. The legionaries thought that they had 
with them a model Imperial family, and promised to wrest 
the throne from Tiberius, Germanicus weakly composed 
the mutiny — mainly by forging a letter in the name of 
Tiberius and then treacherously executing the leaders — and 
endeavoured to cover his blunders by vigorous and rather 
aimless attacks upon the Germans. Tiberius recalled him to 
Rome to enjoy a " triumph," and to keep him out of further 
mischief. 

Merivale acknowledges that his conquests were 
" wholly visionary," but Germanicus had inherited the 
charm and popularity of his father, Drusus, and Rome was 
easily won for him. People streamed out from the gates to 
meet him, and gazed with awe on his gigantic blue-eyed 
captives and on the large highly-coloured paintings of his 
victories in Germany. It was a new source of concern for 



38 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Livia and Tiberius, and, to the satisfaction of Livia's critics, 
the danger ended like all the others. 

Germanicus and Agrippina were sent on a mission to 
the East. Tiberius seems to have had some disdain for his 
spoiled and conceited nephew, and he was well aware of 
the interested aims of those who affected to see in him a 
restorer of the old republican liberty. He chose an older 
statesman, Cn. Calpurnius Piso, to go out as Governor 
of Syria, to watch and prudently direct the movements of 
Germanicus. With Piso was his wife Plancina, an intimate 
friend of Livia. From these Tiberius and Livia shortly 
heard exasperating accounts of the progress of Germanicus 
and Agrippina. Piso found, on calling at Athens, that 
Germanicus had been flattering the Greeks for their 
ancient culture, instead of pressing the dominion of Rome. 
He made free comments on the young general's conduct, 
pushed past his galleys, as they dallied in Greek waters, 
and was hard at work in Syria when Germanicus arrived. 
The wives conducted the quarrel with more asperity than 
their husbands. 

Rome had now its party of Germanicus and party of 
Tiberius, and the news from the East was heatedly dis- 
cussed. Germanicus has gone to Egypt, without asking 
the Emperor's permission, and is patronizing the Greek 
and Egyptian cults, which Tiberius represses, and going 
about in Greek instead of Roman dress. Piso has had a 
violent quarrel with Germanicus, and left Syria. And 
before they have time to discuss this important intelligence 
there comes a report that Germanicus is dangerously ill ; 
that bones of dead men, half-burnt fragments of sacrificial 
victims, leaden tablets with the name of Germanicus 
scrawled on them, and other deadly charms, have been 
found under the floors and between the walls of his house. 
At length the news comes that Germanicus is dead, and 
that with his last breath he has urged his friends to avenge 
him. Rome goes into mourning. All the shops are closed, 
and crowds gather everywhere to discuss this fresh tragedy 
of the Imperial house. In the middle of the night a rumour 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 39 

spreads that Germanicus is not dead, and people fill the 
streets with the glare of their torches, and break into the 
temples. But the fatal news is confirmed, and, when at 
last Agrippina comes with the golden urn containing his 
ashes, such mourning is seen as no living man can 
remember. 

People observed that neither Livia nor Tiberius ap- 
peared at the funeral. Livia had no reason to be present, 
and Tiberius knew that the demonstration was due largely 
to a spirit of hostility to himself. For the rest, it was merely 
the feeling of a frivolous people for a handsome and un- 
fortunate youth. But Livia incurred more serious censure 
during the trial of Piso which followed. The ex-governor 
of Syria defended himself resolutely for a day or two, and 
then, hearing that his wife had deserted him, committed 
suicide. The anger of the citizens now turned on the wife, 
Plancina. The Empress, with whom she had been in close 
communication throughout, begged Tiberius to save her, 
and he reluctantly checked the prosecution. Livia was, 
of course, accused of sheltering a murderess. It must be 
recollected that the accounts of the story are taken in part 
from the memoirs of Agrippina's daughter, and are coloured 
with prejudice against Tiberius and his mother. One can- 
not see anything more serious than indiscretion in Livia's 
conduct. Her conviction of the innocence of Plancina is 
intelligible enough, and one can equally understand how 
she would distrust a trial held at Rome in the inflamed 
state of public feeling. There is no serious reason to sus- 
pect, in the death of Germanicus, the action of any other 
poison than the tainted atmosphere of the East. 

But the interference of Livia annoyed Tiberius, and the 
ten years that follow are full of difi'erences between mother 
and son. The Emperor's resentment of his mother's share 
in public affairs had begun with his reign. Livia had 
proposed to erect a statue to the memory of Octavian. 
Tiberius interfered, and referred her to the Senate for 
permission. She then proposed to give a commemoratory 
banquet to the Senators and th^ir wives. Tiberius re- 



40 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

stricted her to the wives, and entertained the Senators 
himself. He reduced her escort, frowned on the public 
honours that were paid to her, and resented her inter- 
ference in public affairs. On one occasion her friend 
Urgulania was summoned for debt, and, presuming on her 
intimacy with the Empress, treated the process with con- 
tempt. Livia asked Tiberius to quash the proceedings, and 
he deliberately lingered so much on his way to the Forum 
that the case was allowed to proceed. 

These are a few of the stories which illustrate the want 
of harmony between them. For this Livia was largely 
to blame. It was not unnatural that she, who had been 
so often and so profitably consulted by Octavian, should 
expect a larger power under the young Emperor, but she 
failed to take discreet account of the extreme sensitiveness 
of Tiberius. If a story given in Suetonius is correct, she 
so far lost her discretion in one of their quarrels as to 
produce old letters in which Octavian had made bitter 
reflections on the defects of Tiberius. The fault was not 
wholly on her side, however. Tiberius was jealous when 
he contrasted the honour and respect paid to her with the 
general feeling of reserve and distrust toward himself, and 
he pleaded the old-fashioned idea of woman's sphere as a 
pretext to restrain her. He grumbled when he one day 
found her directing the extinction of a fire, as she had done 
more than once in Octavian's time, and he was seriously 
angry when he found that she had placed her name before 
his on a public inscription. 

But we may leave these lesser matters and come to the 
next tragedy in the Imperial chronicle, the shadow of 
which darkened Livia's closing years. She had retired 
from the palace to the house which she had inherited from 
her first husband, Tiberius Nero. Here she remained a 
saddened and helpless spectator of the coming disaster. 
Tiberius, whom she saw only once more before she died, 
had become a peevish and gloomy old man. His tall spare 
frame was bent, his head bald, his face, which had always 
been disfigured with pimples, now hideous with eczema, 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 41 

or concealed with bandages. His large melancholy eyes 
so startled people that they believed he could see in the 
dark. Astrologers and students of the occult gathered 
about him in the palace he had built on the Palatine, and 
the way lay open for adventurers. 

The two chief aspirants for power were Agrippina, the 
widow of' Germanicus, and Sejanus^, Tiberius's favourite 
general. Julia's younger daughter seems to have concen- 
trated in her person all the masculinity of her family. 
"Implacable," as Tacitus says, proud, and ambitious, she 
added to the gloom that was deepening on the Palatine. 
Merivale calls her the " she-wolf." It seems probable that 
she sought marriage with the aged Tiberius in order to 
secure power for herself or her son. The only son of the 
Emperor had been poisoned by Sejanus, as we shall see 
presently, and her son had a plausible title to inherit the 
purple. The authorities tell us that Tiberius one day 
found her in tears, and was entreated, when he asked the 
reason, to find her a husband. She thought it expedient to 
forget the supposed share of Tiberius in the death of her 
husband. 

Her innocent manoeuvres were met, however, by the 
sinister intrigues of Sejanus, one of the most unscrupulous 
characters we have yet encountered. Under a cloak of 
friendliness he was countering her schemes and ruining 
her house. He had seduced her daughter Livilla, the 
wife of Tiberius's son Drusus, and had, with her con- 
nivance, poisoned the young prince, and kept the secret 
from the Emperor for many years. It is said that he then 
made proposals to Agrippina to unite their ambitions, 
and, when these were rejected, he determined to destroy 
her and secure the supreme power for himself. He put 
his great ability astutely at the service of the Emperor, 
and once had the good fortune to save his life, by arching 
his herculean body over Tiberius when the roof of a cave 
fell on them. It is probable that he inflamed the resent- 
ment of Tiberius against his mother, and then used the 
estrangement to increase the unpopularity of the Emperor. 



42 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Scurrilous libels on " the ungrateful son " were current 
in Rome. These are sometimes attributed to writers in 
the service of Livia, but it would be a natural part of 
the scheme of Sejanus to spread them. On one occasion 
a noble lady, Appuleia Varilia, was charged by the Senate 
with accusing Tiberius and Livia of incest. Tiberius 
consulted his mother, and declared to the Senate that 
they wished to treat the libel with contemptuous 
indifference. 

To Sejanus also we must, on the authority of Tacitus, 
attribute a plot against Agrippina, which other writers 
assign to Tiberius or to Livia. At a banquet in the palace 
it was noticed that Agrippina, pale and sullen, passed 
all the dishes untouched. Tiberius at length invited her 
to eat a fine apple which he chose. Under the eyes of 
all she handed it to a servant to throw away, and Tiberius 
not unnaturally complained of her unjust suspicions. 
Tacitus, who gives the most credible version of the story, 
says that the agents of Sejanus had warned her that she 
was to be poisoned at the banquet, so that she would 
act in a way that the Emperor would resent. 

Tiberius, weary of the violent passions of the capital, 
now lived chiefly in Campania. It is not improbable that 
his disfigurement made him sensitive. Rome would not 
spare the feelings of so unpopular a ruler. It is not at 
all clear that he shrank from his Imperial duties — Suetonius 
expressly says that he thought it possible to rule better 
from the provinces — or that he wished to indulge in the 
wild debauches which some attribute to him. Probably 
Sejanus, to secure more power for himself, persuaded him 
that he could best discharge his duties from a provincial 
seat. 

At this juncture, in the year 29, saddened by the 
estrangement from her son, by his helpless surrender to 
an unscrupulous adventurer, and by the increasing de- 
generation of Rome, Livia died. She had, by sober 
living — PHny adds, by the constant chewing of a sweetmeat 
containing a certain medicinal root, and by the use of 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 43 

Pucinian wine — attained the great age of eighty-six. She 
had seen her husband dispel the long horrors of civil 
war, refresh the Empire, and adorn Rome; and she had 
felt the gloom and chill of a coming tragedy in her later 
years. Few of the Empresses have been so differently 
estimated as Livia, Merivale regards her as " a memorable 
example of successful artifice, having obtained in succession, 
by craft if not by crime, every object she could desire 
in the career of female ambition." He adds : " But she 
had long survived every genuine attachment she may at 
any time have inspired, nor has a single voice been raised 
by posterity to supply the want of honest eulogium in 
her own day." ^ 

The more concentrated research of the biographer has 
often to reverse the verdict of the historian, and in this 
case it must acquit Livia of either craft or vice. It is a 
singular error to say that Livia had no "honest eulogium " 
in her own day. The Roman Senate is exposed to the 
disdain of historians for its obsequiousness to the reigning 
Emperor, yet, at the death of Livia, it sought to honour 
her memory in spite of the resentment of Tiberius. The 
Emperor had refused to go to Rome, either to see her 
before death or to attend her funeral. He gave to Rome 
an example of silent indifference. Yet he had to use his 
authority to prevent the Senate from decreeing divine 
honours to Livia, building an arch to her memory, and 
declaring her "mother of her country." Dio remarks 
that the Senators were moved to do these things out of 
sincere gratitude and respect. Few of the less wealthy 
members of the Senate had not profited by her generosity. 
Their children had been educated, and their daughters 
had received dowries, from her purse. Her generosity is 
recognized by all the authorities. Her humanity is made 
plain by the contents of this chapter. 

The adverse estimate of Livia's character is chiefly 
based on the " Annals " of Tacitus, and it has long been 
recognized that Tacitus drew his account largely from 

» Vol. V, p. 353. 



44 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the memoirs of the younger Agrippina, daughter of the 
woman who hated Livia. Yet Tacitus adds, when he 
has recorded the death of Livia: "From this moment 
the government of Tiberius became a sheer oppressive 
despotism. While Augusta lived one avenue of escape 
remained open, for the Emperor was habitually deferent 
toward his mother, and Sejanus dared not thwart her 
parental authority; but when this curb was removed, 
there was nothing to check their further career." ^ 

We have seen that Livia had used the same restraining 
influence on the impetuosity of Octavian. With her died 
the attribute, or the wise policy, of Imperial clemency, only 
to be revived by Emperors who adopted that Stoic creed 
in which she found consolation after the death of her son. 
That she was " hard " and " unscrupulous " is entirely at 
variance with the most authenticated facts of her career. 
To say that she was " avaricious " is a sheer absurdity. 
She maintained her sober personal habits to the end, and 
took money only to bestow it on the indigent and worthy, 
or expend it in raising public buildings. We may grant 
that she had some ambition, but may claim that it was well 
for Rome that she had it. She fell into many errors of 
judgment in her later years, when Roman life was confused 
by such strong undercurrents of intrigue ; but these very 
errors tend to discredit the notion that she employed a 
consummate art and strong intelligence in the furthering 
of her own interests. In a word, it is the vices and follies 
of later Empresses that have disposed historians to regard 
her sober virtues as a mere mask. 

1 "Annals," v. 3. 



THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 45 



NOTE 

For the guidance of the general reader it is advisable to add a few 
words on the Latin authorities, whom we now constantly quote. Tacitus, 
the chief source of our knowledge down to the year 70 a.d., is not only 
weakened as an historian by the very strength of his morality, but he has too 
lightly followed the memoirs in which the later Agrippina defamed the rival 
Imperial family. Suetonius, who takes us as far as Domitian, is no less 
honest, but he has too genial and indulgent a love of anecdotes to discard 
any on the mere ground that they are untrue or improbable, Dio Cassius, 
who covers the first two centuries, is usually described as malignant ; but 
one may question if he does more than indulge still further the same amiable 
preference of piquancy to truth. The " Historia Augusta," which is our chief 
authority for the greater part of the Empresses and the richest source of 
scandal, has been much and profitably discussed since Gibbon placed such 
reliance on it. It is now thought by some experts that the original writers 
of this series of biographical sketches of the Roman Emperors lived at the 
beginning of the third century, and had a comparatively sober standard of 
work. Toward the close of the third, or beginning of the fourth, century 
the work was written afresh by the group of less scrupulous writers whose 
names, or pseudonyms, actually stand at the head of its chapters. But a 
still later writer once more recast the work, and lowered its authority. He 
wrote frankly from the point of view of the piquant anecdotist, omitting 
much that would interest only the prosy student of exact facts, and filling up 
the vacant space with such faint legends of Imperial vice or folly as still, in 
his time, lingered without the pale of history, or arose in the field of romance. 
The question is fully discussed by Otto Schultz, " Leben des Kaisers 
Hadrian" (1905), and Professor Korneraann, "Kaiser Hadrian" (1906). 



CHAPTER III 

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 

I'^HE remainder of the reign of Tiberius does not 
properly concern us, but a very brief account of 
it will serve at once to confirm our estimate of the 
influence of Livia, and to prepare us for the almost in- 
credibly degraded scenes that were witnessed under his 
successor. We saw that two persons were intriguing for 
the purple mantle which must soon fall from the shoulders 
of the aged and unhealthy Emperor. One was a woman 
of great ability and masculine courage, who sought the 
succession for one of her son' , The other was a strong 
soldier and an astute minister, a man of the most un- 
scrupulous and hypocritical character. The change in 
the form of government had already betrayed its evil. The 
fate of the vast Empire seemed but a ball tossed from 
player to player. But the issue was even worse than the 
most sober observer anticipated. Before Tiberius died 
both the strong man and the strong woman were to be 
destroyed, and the Imperial power was to pass to one 
who was grossly unfit to exercise it. 

Less than a year after the ashes of Livia had been laid 
in the marble tower by the Tiber, the Senate received a 
letter from the court impeaching Agrippina and her two 
elder sons. According to Tacitus, it was " commonly 
believed " that this letter had been written some time 
before, and had been withheld through the influence pf 
Livia. The only reasonable interpretation that we can 
put on this rumour is that people were so convinced of 

46 



/ 




AGRIPPINA THE ELDER 

BUST IN THE MUSEUM CHIARAMONTI 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 47 

the humanity of Livia that they did not think the letter 
would have been written or sent if she were still alive. 
However that may be, Agrippina and her sons were put 
on trial and condemned to exile, in spite of the angry 
crowds that gathered about the court-house. Agrippina 
passed with dramatic suddenness from her dream of ruling 
the world to a dreary exile in Herculaneum, and, after 
a time, to the far more terrible prison of Pandateria, where 
her mother had spent four years of agony. There, with 
all the strength of her proud and ambitious nature, she 
awaited the death of Tiberius. But the only messages 
which came over the sea to her gradually broke her spirit. 
Her sons, Drusus and Nero, had been convicted of un- 
natural vice, as well as conspiracy ; and although we may 
entertain some doubt about the conspiracy, the other 
charge is only too credible when we know the habits of 
the class to which the youths belonged. Nero was 
imprisoned on one of the islands of the Ponza group, 
and it was not long before his mother, on the neigh- 
bouring island, heard that he had starved himself, or 
been starved, to death. After some time she learned 
that Drusus had followed his example, and the despair- 
ing woman refused food in her turn, and went into the 
kindlier exile of death. The last of Julia's children did 
not escape the tragic fate which hung over the family. 
We have yet to see how the curse falls on the third 
generation. 

Sejanus, whose action we may confidently see in the 
ruin of Agrippina, now stood near the steps of the throne, 
waiting impatiently for the passing of the despised Emperor. 
He was betrothed to Livilla, the widow of Tiberius's only 
son Drusus, whom he had poisoned, with Livilla's assist- 
ance. With a consort of Csesarean blood he felt that he 
could easily fill the place of Tiberius. And in the height 
of his corrupt power and criminal hope the vengeance of 
the fates fell on him like a stroke of lightning. It is said 
that the wife he proposed to divorce disclosed to Tiberius 
that Sejanus was the murderer of his only son. Within 



48 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

a few hours he was impeached, condemned, and put to 
death. All who had gathered about him in the hope of 
his coming power were scattered or destroyed by the frantic 
anger of Tiberius. Livilla was urged by her mother to 
bury her shame in the grave. She refused, and was 
banished. We shall meet her again in the chronicle of 
vice, and violence. 

After this terrible ordeal Tiberius withdrew to Capreae, 
where he had built a palace. Wandering, some years ago, 
among the ruins of what is believed to have been the 
palace of Tiberius, I found that the echoes still lingered 
there of the dark stories which men told in Rome of his later 
years. Men said that he had shut himself in that sea-girt 
palace only to indulge, unseen, in the grossest perversions 
of a sensual nature, and that a new profession of ministers 
to lust, of which a description may be found in Tacitus, 
had grown out of his weariness even of unnatural vice. 
One does not readily admit such orgies in a man between 
his seventy-second and seventy-eighth year, and it seems 
to me that one may offer an explanation of the myth, which 
will also serve to introduce the third Emperor of Rome 
and his wives. 

Suetonius describes Tiberius as surrounded by learned 
men and absorbed in obscure problems of astrology, 
mythology, and letters. The most resolute adherent of 
the more romantic story must have some difficulty in: 
reconciling this band of prosy pedants with the sensual 
orgies which popular rumour located in the lonely palace. 
When, however, we learn that two young princes of the 
least intellectual and most immoral character formed part 
of the household, we see that there may have been two 
entirely distinct lives sheltered by the palace at Capreae. 
If we suppose that these young men and their sycophantic 
attendants freely indulged in the vices which were then 
common to Roman youths, while their elders were intent 
on the glorious planets of a Neapolitan sky, we have a 
satisfactory explanation of the legend. The horror of 
Rome at the Emperor's bloody avenging of the murder 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 49 

of his son would not dispose people to discriminate 
conscientiously. 

One of these princes was Herod Agrippa, son of the 
King of Judaea, whom Octavian had brought to Rome for 
security. The other, a year younger, was " Caligula," as 
the soldiers had nicknamed the surviving son of Agrippina 
and Germanicus. Caius Caesar — to give him his real name — 
was in his nineteenth year when his mother was banished. 
Tiberius a few years later took him to Capreae, where he 
would prove an apt pupil to Herod in Oriental ways. The 
vein of moral perversity, if not insanity, which we trace 
in all the descendants of Julia, is most clearly exhibited in 
Caligula, and the tragedy of the Caesars deepens when, 
in the year 37, Tiberius dies, and Caligula is called to the 
throne.^ 

He had been married in 33 to Junia Claudilla, daughter 
of Junius Silanus, a proconsul of eminent services and 
distinguished family. She was happily spared the fate of 
sharing the throne with Caligula by dying in childbirth. 
What her life in Capreae must have been is not obscurely 
suggested by her early death. No prospect in Europe is 
more pleasant than that which unfolds its superb and far- 
lying beauty to the spectator on the green summits of 
Capri, from which the eye may wander over the broad 
blue bay, with its silver fringe of surf, or round the 
crescent of evergreen land that begins with Sorrento, and 
sweeps majestically, past the foot of Vesuvius, to the 
distant haze in which Baiae once lived. Yet to a refined 
and sensitive young woman this splendid palace must 
have been a deathly jail. Repelled alike by the purblind 
scholars and the licentious princes, the heavy monotony 
of learning and vice unrelieved by visits to Rome, she 
sank under her burden in three years — just missing by 
one year the title of second Empress of Rome. Her father, 
a grave and illustrious Senator, endeavoured to check 
Caligula's extravagance in the first year of his reign. The 

^ An apology should be made for retaining the nickname of the third 
Emperor, but it seems to be ineradicably fixed in history. 

4 



50 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

brutal Emperor bade him " take his greeting to the spirit 
of the dead," With a last sad glance at the future of his 
country, Junius Silanus obeyed. 

We are credibly told that Caligula then made love to 
Ennia, wife of the Prefect of the Guard. Sejanus had 
persuaded Tiberius to form a corps of " Praetorian Guards," 
an Imperial body-guard which was destined to have a 
disastrous influence on the future of Rome. The actual 
prefect or commander of this regiment, Macro, was the 
most powerful person in the suite of Tiberius. With or 
without his connivance, his wife yielded to Caligula, on 
the condition that he should marry her when he became 
Emperor. Macro and Ennia accompanied Caligula when 
he bore the will and the ashes of Tiberius to Rome, A 
gloom had settled over Italy during the later years of 
Tiberius's reign, and men hailed the young Caligula as 
the sun and the blue sky are hailed after days of dark 
tempest at sea. Standing by their flower-girt altars, 
coming out with torches at night, people greeted him 
with frantic epithets of affection. He was their " star," 
their "chicken," their "dear child," as he had been to 
the soldiers in Germany years before. Not that he was 
a handsome youth. His frame was thin and lanky, and 
his movements awkward. He was prematurely bald, and 
his sunken eyes looked out with a scowl from his pallid 
face. But he was the son of Germanicus, the grandson 
of Julia. All the follies which the family had perpetrated 
were forgotten. 

For a month or two he fulfilled the hope of his people. 
The reign of terror was ended at once. He recalled his 
sisters from exile, and brought to Rome, with great 
respect, the ashes of his mother and brothers. The circus 
and the amphitheatre rang once more with the cheers 
of the populace. The golden age of Octavian had been 
restored, men said. But the emasculated system and feeble 
mind of Caligula were unequal to the nervous strain. 
Early in his reign Ennia reminded him of his written 
promise to marry her, and Macro had an air of patronage 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 51 

in advising him. In a sudden blaze of ferocity he ordered 
Ennia and her children to be executed, and graciously 
permitted Macro to end his own life. He had found a 
wife — his sister Drusilla. 

His incestuous relation with Drusilla was soon the 
topic of Rome. It had probably begun before she was 
banished, and when he recalled her to his palace, a young 
and beautiful girl of about twenty summers, he conceived 
a violent passion for her, divorced her from her husband, 
and announced that he intended to marry her. The 
Emperor was above all laws, he said. Rome laughed the 
laughter of fools. He was providing it with stupendous 
entertainment. The games of the circus ran for twelve 
hours, day after day, and the night was turned into fresh 
day with illuminations, banquets, and such pleasures as 
they could get with the money he freely distributed. In 
the midst of it all he fell ill ; not improbably he was 
paying with epilepsy the price of his wild excesses. There 
was such sorrow in Rome as had rarely been felt at the 
illness of its greatest citizens. Men vowed their lives for 
the life of the beloved Emperor; and Caligula, when he 
recovered, saw that they kept their vows. He was ill for 
many weeks, and, when his strength returned, he had lost 
the little sanity and sobriety that nature had ever put in 
his ill-compacted frame. The rest of his reign was a 
nightmare. 

Drusilla died during his illness, or soon after his 
recovery. Some writers suggest that her malady was a 
feeling of deep shame, but the description which Dio gives 
of her does not support this view, nor does the single 
virtue of remorse seem to be known among the descendants 
of Julia. The grief of Cahgula was no less insane than 
his passion had been. No illustrious Roman was ever 
honoured with such pomp of funeral as this woman, 
whose incestuous life he cried over the world. A Senator 
saw her soul mount to heaven from the burning pile, 
and was rewarded with a million sesterces. The degraded 
Senate declared her a goddess, and it was decreed that 



52 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

henceforward women should swear by the divinity of 
Drusilla. Earth and heaven resounded with his demented 
moans ; and even before Drusilla was put among the gods 
he had married again. 

Livia Orestilla, the second Empress of Rome, is one 
of those ladies who are known to us only in the familiar 
phrase, that she was a young woman of great beauty 
and illustrious family. In her case we need no ampler 
portrait, as she was Empress only for a few days. Before 
the end of the first year of his reign (37), and in the 
midst of his lamentation over Drusilla, Caligula was 
invited to the wedding of Calpurnius Piso, a noble of 
rank and wealth. Caligula fancied the bride, and at once 
made her his Empress. With equal license he divorced 
her a few days afterwards, and she learned what it was 
to fall from the height of a throne. He forbade her to 
have any commerce with the husband of whom he had 
robbed her, and then, alleging that his order had been 
disregarded, banished both of them to remote and distinct 
parts of the Empire. 

The next lady on whom his unbridled imagination rested 
was Lollia Paulina. Caligula was probably more attracted 
by her wealth than by the remarkable beauty, the high 
character, and the distinguished ancestry which the 
chronicles ascribe to her. The rich spoils of conquered 
provinces had accumulated in her family, and her husband, 
the Governor of Macedonia and Achaia, was industriously 
adding to their wealth. People told at Rome that she once 
went to a marriage-supper in pearls and emeralds that 
were valued at fifty million sesterces. Her high virtue 
seems to have been consistent with a display that made 
her a topic of table-talk, and that brought upon her a 
lamentable fate. Caligula, piqued by the stories of her 
wealth and beauty, ordered her husband to bring her to 
Rome, and she was soon afterwards established in his 
palace as the third Empress of Rome. Within a year 
Caligula divorced her on the ground that she gave no 
promise of perpetuating his line. 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 53 

It is often said that Caligula had only married her for the 
purpose of seizing her fortune, as his prodigal expenditure 
was rapidly emptying the treasury. This seems to be an 
error, as we shall find her in the next chapter incurring 
a miserable fate on account of her immense wealth. The 
truth was that Caligula had in the meantime discovered a 
lady whose temper wholly suited his own, and of whose 
fertility he was actually assured. 

In the spring or early summer of the year 39 we find 
him perpetrating one of his stupendous acts of folly at 
Baise. He was accustomed, in the warmer weather, to 
cruise about the coast of Campania with his wife and suite. 
He had two great Liburnian galleys built, each with ten 
banks of oars, their prows blazing with gold and jewels, 
their decks adorned with vines, colonnades, and divers 
freaks of irresponsible wealth. As they cruised by the 
bay, some one reminded him of an old proverb which 
spoke of riding from Baiae to Puteoli, across an arm of the 
bay, as one of the most certain impossibilities. At once 
he ordered a bridge to be built across the water and 
elaborately decorated. In what was supposed to be the 
armour of Alexander the Great, over which was thrown a 
mantle of purple silk, the conqueror of impossibilities rode 
from Baiae to Puteoli. On the following day he drove his 
chariot across ; and far into the night, the hills around 
being lit up with immense fires, he carried the debauch 
which celebrated his glorious feat. In their intoxication 
numbers reeled from the bridge into the scented waters. 

Eager for fresh victories, he transferred his delirious 
court to Gaul, and declared that he was proceeding against 
the fierce Germans. The tribes were not in revolt, and the 
whole expedition was a comedy ; some of the Roman writers 
say that a few tame captives were conveyed across the 
river and hunted, so that the Emperor might truthfully 
inform the Senate that he had gained a victory and merited 
a triumph. Suetonius even adds that, when he did 
eventually return to Rome and celebrate his triumph, a 
few slaves were forced to learn a little German and dye 



54 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

their hair, to pose as conquered tribesmen before his 
chariot. In the meantime, events which concern us more 
closely were happening at Lyons. 

The extravagance of Caligula was rapidly emptying the 
treasury. In twelve months he spent 2,700 million sesterces. 
His baths were of the most precious ointments ; his 
banquets were especially designed to waste money — one 
alone cost ;^8o,ooo, in modern coinage — and, when the flow 
was not fast enough, he drank pearls dissolved in vinegar, 
and had gold fashioned in the sha'^e of food and served to 
his guests. He disdainfully swept the palaces of Octavian 
and Tiberius, with other mansions, from the Palatine, and 
erected a palace of extraordinary proportions and barbaric 
splendour. Such habits drew about him a crowd of 
ignoble parasites, and one can well believe that he had 
discovered a conspiracy against him at Lyons. He had 
prostituted the honour of Rome in a manner so childish 
and base that few could be unmoved. Observing the 
wealth of the Gauls — for Lugdunum (Lyons) was then the 
centre of a prosperous and cultivated region — he began to 
sell to them the possessions of the Imperial house. He 
was present at the auction, and the proceeds were so 
satisfactory that he sent to Rome for wagon-loads of 
furniture, heirlooms, and curios from the Imperial palaces, 
and, as they were offered for sale, pointed out himself the 
historical value of each object. 

In his suite was the first husband of his sister Drusilla. 
This distinguished noble, Lepidus, may have exchanged 
views on the insanity of the Emperor with the disgusted 
Gauls. At all events, Caligula sent word to the Senate 
that he had discovered a plot against his life, and added 
that his sisters, Livilla and Agrippina, had been convicted 
of adultery with Lepidus. He put Lepidus to death, and 
compelled Agrippina, a proud and spirited young princess, 
to carry on foot to Rome the urn containing the ashes of 
her alleged lover. We shall see how, on his return to 
Rome, Caligula made atonement to vice for this drastic 
punishment of adultery. In fact, he already had a mistress 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 55 

in the Court at Lyons, and this lady now displaces Lollia 
Paulina, and becomes the fourth Empress of Rome, 

Milonia Caesonia is one of the oddest figures in the very 
varied gallery through which our story conducts us. Julia 
and Messalina are imperial in their vices. Caesonia, whose 
vices are so little discussed, stands entirely apart from the 
other Empresses — at least of the first century. Wholly 
destitute of character or culture, already worn with the 
bearing of three children, she seems to have won and 
retained the fancy — one cannot call it affection or regard — 
of Caligula by a handsome figure, a robust masculinity, and 
an entire lack of refinement. He often exhibited her nude 
to his friends, and encouraged her to dress as an Amazon 
and ride her horse before the army. His disordered mind 
puzzled at times over the charm by which she held him. 
He would stroke her strong white throat, and murmur 
pleasantly that at one word from him the knife of the exe- 
cutioner would sink into it ; and he would sometimes, with 
the same brutal humour, threaten to have her tortured, in 
order to discover what philtre she secretly administered 
to him. She had much tact and no scruples. Their 
daughter Drusilla was born on the day of their marriage, 
according to Suetonius, or thirty days afterwards, according 
to more credible authorities. As the child grew, it showed 
the temper of a wild cat. Caligula watched its frenzies 
with delight, as it screamed and bit its nurse ; there was, 
he said, no room for doubt about the paternity. 

With such a spouse, and with his favourite courtesan 
Pyrallis, whom also he had established in his new palace, 
Caligula indulged his insane impulses without the least 
restraint. Within a few months of inflicting so terrible 
a punishment on his sister, he was giving imperial 'lessons 
in incest and adultery. So low had much of the Roman 
nobility fallen that no sword was drawn on the Emperor, 
or employed on its possessor, when he concluded his 
banquets with a command of promiscuous intercourse to 
the men and women of patrician rank whom he entertained. 
Nor were his excesses confined within the walls of his 



56 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

palace, and known only by uncertain rumour. He 
developed a passion for driving chariots, and frequented 
the company of grooms and gladiators. Rome genially 
applauded, since it implied more and longer shows in 
the circus and amphitheatre. The struggles of the 
different factions in the races — of whom Caligula sup- 
ported the Greens — more than ever enlivened the dull 
days of an idle populace. Caligula forced nobles to 
exercise the base and dangerous profession of the gladiator, 
and to drive chariots before the mob in the circus. 

But the amusement of Rome reached its height when 
Caligula, in the year 39, discovered his divinity. Other 
Emperors were content to leave it to the flattery of their 
people to detect a divinity in them after their very human 
careers were over. " I am turning into a god," said one of 
them ironically, as he died. Caligula believed that his 
splendour was already divine. Vitellius, a contemptible 
courtier, father of the later Emperor, shrewdly borrowed 
the idea from Oriental monarchs, and suggested it to 
Caligula. Then were witnessed scenes in Rome which 
even the wildest extravagances of Nero cannot rival. Its 
citizens had, at the peril of their lives, to restrain their 
laughter, and bend in respectful worship, when the slim, 
ungraceful youth — he was yet only in his twenty-seventh 
year — with the weariness of dissipation on his pale face, 
trod their streets in the garments of Jove, with a beard of 
gold thread, or marched past them with the bow and 
quiver and golden halo of Apollo, or dressed to the more 
congenial part of Venus. A machine was made by which 
he could, in a puerile way, imitate the thunder of the rival 
god ; and he ordered the heads to be struck off the statues 
of the Greek deities and replaced by copies of his own. 
A deity must have a cult. Caligula appointed himself 
and his horse, for which he provided a marble palace 
and an ivory manger, the high priests of his cult. Caesonia 
was associated in the priesthood, and the position of 
ordinary priest of the cult was sold to various nobles 
at the price of eight million sesterces each. Poor men 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 57 

were forced to ruin themselves and put an end to their 
lives; v^ealthier men meekly posed as the ministers of 
a divinity who gorged himself with food and wine at 
each meal, and resorted to the vomit that he might return 
to the table. 

How long nature would have suffered this madness 
to debase the fallen city one cannot tell, but the exhaustion 
of the treasury now led Caligula to do things which roused 
a few Romans from their lethargy. He repeated in Rome 
the auctions he had held at Lyons, and many stories are 
told of his brutal irresponsibility. The truth of these 
stories is always doubtful, but one may be quoted as 
an illustration of the popular feeling. It is said that a 
Senator fell asleep during one of the sales. Caligula 
malignantly called the auctioneer's attention to the fact 
that the sleeping man was nodding at every bid, and the 
Senator awoke to find that he had bought thirteen 
gladiators and other property at fabulous prices. Caligula 
even stood at his palace door to receive gifts, pleading 
that the addition to his family had impoverished him. 

He then discovered a new source of funds in the 
execution of the wealthier nobles. Brutal and sanguinary 
from the first, his growing madness and his delight in 
gladiatorial shows fostered his cruelty. He had an actor 
burned alive in the Forum for venturing even to hint, 
in an ambiguous phrase, that the Imperial behaviour was 
reprehensible. Others he had tortured and executed in 
his presence, in order that he might enjoy the sensation 
of seeing them suffer. But it was mainly in quest of 
money to maintain his terrible expenditure that he stooped 
to the lowest excesses. No man of wealth in Rome was 
safe. Informers were eager for the fourth part of a victim's 
property, to which they were entitled after a successful 
impeachment ; Caligula hungered for the remaining three- 
fourths. Every ten days he would " clear his accounts," 
as he put it, or doom to death any wealthy Senators whom 
he had chosen to put on his list of suspects. He would 
return from the court boasting to Caesonia of the heavy 



58 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

work he had done while she slept. A great terror brooded 
over the city, and men talked of the Emperor in whispers. 
Omens and signs multiplied. The statue of Jupiter 
Olympus had been brought to Rome, and one day the 
workmen rushed in alarm from the temple in which it 
was placed, crying that the marble god had burst into 
a fit of laughter. 

On January 24th, in the year 41, this appaUing gloom 
came to an end, and the third Emperor and fourth Empress 
of Rome were justly removed. The long hesitation of the 
Romans must not too readily be ascribed to cowardice. 
The Praetorian Guards were now encamped at the edge of 
the city, and were richly paid for personal loyalty to the 
Emperor ; so that there was very faint hope of a successful 
rising of the citizens. For the greater part these formidable 
soldiers were mercenaries, caring nothing for the honour of 
Rome, faithful as dogs to the liberal master. It Was not 
until an officer of this regiment headed a conspiracy that 
any action could be taken with a prospect of success. This 
officer was a favourite of Caligula, but the Imperial friend- 
ship was expressed in such coarse and stinging epithets 
that he was driven to rebel. He and his associates deter- 
mined to assassinate Caligula when he attended the Palatine 
games in the later part of January. A large wooden theatre 
had been erected for the occasion, and Caligula presided 
with delight at the repulsive spectacles. Such was the 
popular enthusiasm that the conspirators surrounded 
Caligula day after day without daring to touch him. His 
German guard, insensible to the grievances of the Romans, 
would at once and blindly oppose a rising, and the people 
seemed to have forgotten his tyranny in the blood-reeking 
show he had provided for them. 

They came to the fifth and final day of the games. 
Caligula was unwell, and wished to remain in the palace, 
but he was persuaded to make an effort to attend the final 
performance. Before a vast audience the actors represented 
the crucifixion of a band of robbers, and the stage was 
washed with blood. The chief actor of the time had a trick 



THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 59 

of pouring blood from his mouth, and the other actors 
clumsily imitated him. When it was over, Caligula, elated 
with the wild applause of the citizens, entered the narrow 
passage which led from the theatre to his house on the 
Palatine, The conspirators seized their last chance, and 
fell upon the Emperor with their swords. Within a few 
hours Rome so far changed that it was the turn of the 
partisans of Caligula to tremble. His body was removed 
and stealthily buried by Herod Agrippa. 

Caesonia seems to have remained in, or preceded Caligula 
to, the palace, with her little daughter. There the cries of 
the guard and the noisy confusion in the palace would soon 
announce the disaster to her. She had no time to escape, 
or devise any policy. A centurion rushed to her room 
and stabbed her to death. Her infant was roughly seized 
by a soldier, and its brain was shattered on the walls of the 
palace, where the brief infamies of its father and mother 
had degraded the civilization of Rome. 



CHAPTER IV 

VALERIA MESSALINA 

THE fall of Caesonia was hardly less romantic than 
the succession to her position of the woman who is 
known to every reader of Roman history, and to 
many others, as Messalina. When Caligula entered the 
narrow passage leading to the Palatine, after the perform- 
ance in the theatre, a few members of his suite walked 
before him. One of these was his uncle Claudius, a slow- 
witted and despised man, in his fiftieth year, whom Caligula 
had rescued from humiliation and put in office. He had 
already entered the palace when the raucous cries of the 
German guard and the flash of weapons informed him of 
the assassination of the Emperor. The guards were cutting 
down such of the conspirators as they could reach. In 
instinctive terror Claudius hid behind a curtain, nor was he 
reassured when he saw the soldiers pass with the heads 
of the nobles they had slain. Presently a soldier of the 
Praetorian Guard noticed his feet below the curtain, and 
drew him out. Claudius fell to the ground in terror, and 
implored them to spare his life. The soldiers had recog- 
nized him, however. They put him in a litter, and carried 
him on their shoulders to the camp. Citizens whom they 
passed in the street pitied the harmless and, as was generally 
believed, half-witted prince. At last some one learned, or 
divined, the purpose of the guards, and Claudius awoke 
from his terror to hear the strange cry of "Salve, Im- 
perator," and realized that he was to be made Emperor 
of Rome. 

60 



VALERIA MESSALINA 6i 

He had been married three years before to Valeria 
Messahna, who thus became the fifth Empress. As the 
youngest son of Drusus, brother of Tiberius, and Antonia, 
daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, he was the natural 
heir to Caligula. The Imperial power was in no sense 
hereditary, but the attachment of the Praetorian Guards to 
the ruling family, and their irresistible domination over 
Rome, for some time ensured a kind of hereditary 
succession. There had, however, been no deliberate 
proposal to put Claudius on the throne. While the 
future of the Empire was being determined by the rough 
mercenaries in the Prastorian camp, where Claudius 
promised a substantial largess for his elevation, the 
Senate was actually discussing the question of restoring 
the Republic. Somewhat deformed in person, clumsy in 
gait and corpulent, stuttering in speech, deficient at least 
in the power of expression, Claudius had always been 
regarded as a negligible offshoot of the Julian stock. His 
mother had spoken of him as "a little monster," Octa- 
vian had genially treated him as half-witted, and, when 
he arrived at early manhood, Tiberius had refused to give 
him any rank or office. Caligula, however, had given him 
consular rank, and promoted him in the palace, though he 
treated his uncle with the brutal jocularity which his 
mental infirmity was held to justify. 

We shall see that this treatment was far from just, for 
Claudius had some excellent qualities ; but the disdain of 
his family threw him upon the society of his servants, and 
led him to seek consolation in the pleasures of the table 
and the dice-board. He had in early youth been betrothed 
to a daughter of Julia. This contract was dissolved when 
Julia's vices were discovered, and he was married to a 
young lady of distinguished and wealthy family, Livia 
Medullina Camilla. She died on the wedding-day, and he 
married Plautia Urgulanilla, a daughter of the Empress 
Livia's intimate friend, Urgulania. Suspecting, after a few 
years, that \ier friendship with his emancipated-slave 
friends was warmer than he intended, he divorced her, 



62 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

and married JElia. Psetina, who in turn was shortly 
divorced. 

In the year 38 he married the notorious Valeria 
Messalina, whose name conveys to every student of history 
or morals a summary impression of the worst features of 
the early Empire. The spirit of our time is so resolutely 
bent on visiting the sins of the children on their fathers — 
so determined to seek the secret of character in heredity — 
that the older biographical practice of drawing out 
genealogies cannot be entirely abandoned ; though one 
may wonder whether the tainted atmosphere of Rome may 
not have been more deadly than a tainted stock. It is 
enough to say that both her parents were of the Julian 
family, and were first cousins of Claudius. Her father, 
Valerius Messala Barbatus, was a Senator of distinction. 
He is known to us as the Senator who, in the old Roman 
spirit, made a futile effort to restrain women from invading 
public life and the camp. Her mother has a less reputable 
record. We shall see that she eventually falls under a 
charge of conspiracy and magic ; but we may find that her 
more serious offence was an intense hatred of the Empress 
Agrippina, who brought the charge against her. 

Messalina, as we may now briefly call her — with a 
passing protest against that uncouth expression, " the 
Messaline " — was in her sixteenth year at the time of her 
marriage. An indulgent imagination will be able to 
appreciate the dangerous situation of the young girl. 
Entering, in her teens, a world of the most seductive 
pleasure and the utmost license, with so responsive and 
impulsive a nature as she had, she needed the guidance of 
a man whom she could at least respect. Instead of this, 
she found herself mated to a man of forty-eight years, 
whose full paunch and long thin legs and tremulous head 
were the jest of the Palatine, and who spent his hours in 
the company of Greek freedmen, or in too prolonged an 
enjoyment of rich dishes and costly wines. Claudius, it is 
true, adored her, but his adoration only made him the surer 
dupe of her craving for indulgence. Her misconduct 



VALERIA MESSALINA 63 

probably began early. When, after the evening meal, she 
left her spouse intoxicated and snoring over the emptied 
dishes, when his throat had been tickled with a feather, 
so that he might disgorge and return to the Imperial 
dainties, the young girl would naturally yield to the 
counsels of the unscrupulous courtiers who abounded in 
such a palace. 

The path to the abyss was made smoother for her by 
her husband's reliance on his freedmen. In the later years 
of the Republic, when the dominion of Rome was extended 
over the East, the practice had grown of employing the 
more accomplished slaves of Greece and Syria in the 
patrician palaces. Equally expert at keeping accounts or 
pandering to vice, they won their emancipation and 
acquired large fortunes in the service of their new masters. 
They were usually regarded with disdain, but, as we saw, 
Claudius had been driven to associate familiarly with them, 
and they attained great power when he ascended the 
throne. Rome now discovered a new evil in the Imperial 
rule it had adopted. All who wished to approach the 
Emperor with a petition had to flatter or bribe the freed- 
man Callistus, to whom this part of Claudius's duties 
was entrusted. His steward of finances, Pallas, his 
secretary. Narcissus, and his adviser in letters, Polybius, 
stood at one or other avenue of the palace, and exacted 
toll of all who approached. Offices were distributed 
through their avaricious hands, and it was soon noticed 
that they built magnificent villas in the neighbourhood of 
Rome. Whether the rumour was true or not, it was 
believed in Rome that some of the noblest ladies paid 
an ignominious price to these men for the favours they 
sought, or were surrendered to them by the Empress. 
It is at all events clear that Messalina soon came to an 
understanding with them. Both they and she needed to 
dupe the purblind Emperor, and it was felt that a friendly 
co-operation would be better than a precarious contest for 
supremacy. 

Before the end of the first year of Claudius's reign this 



64 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

corrupt collusion began to show its influence. Claudius 
had begun well. He set to work at once to redress the 
injustice and follies of Caligula. A general amnesty was 
granted, the courts of justice were purified, the administra- 
tion was opened to the abler provincials, and the public 
funds were expended on public works of solid usefulness. 
How far the freedmen were responsible for these measures 
it is difficult to say, but it seems that we must grant 
Claudius, not only good will, but some quality of judgment. 
At the same time, there is evidence from the first of some 
infirmity of mind. His work as a judge seems to have been 
more remarkable for industry than enlightenment. On one 
occasion an angry knight {eques) threw books at him in the 
court-house; on another, during a shortage of corn, the 
people pelted him with mouldy crusts in the Forum. 
Humane he was, apparently, in those early months, but 
he does not seem to have shaken off his earlier repute and 
exhibited any personal dignity. 

It was not long before even his humanity was warped 
by the malignant persuasions of his wife and the corrupt 
connivance of his freedmen. In our age of apologists there 
has been some effort to relieve the character of Messalina 
from its heavy burden of infamy, or at least to discredit the 
evidence adduced for it. I have already said enough about 
the Roman authorities to justify one in making some re- 
serve in regard to the details transmitted to us about 
Messalina. When we read Tacitus we have to remember 
that he had before him the memoirs of her bitter enemy 
and successor, Agrippina. When we read Suetonius and 
Dio and later writers we must not forget their love of 
vivid colours and romantic details. Yet these writers had 
in their time official records, and something like public 
journals, belonging to the earlier period, which put the 
malignant and unscrupulous action of Messalina beyond 
question ; of the less startling stories of her infidelities we 
have proof enough in the remarkable and authentic episode 
which will close her career. It cannot reasonably be 
doubted that the traditional estimate of the character of 



VALERIA MESSALINA 65 

Messalina is substantially just, though we must use some 
discretion in admitting particular statements about her. 

With this reserve we may follow, in fair chronological 
order, the career of this young girl of nineteen, who is 
dazed by the sudden attainment of Imperial wealth and 
power, until, in her twenty-fifth year, her childish efforts 
to pierce her bosom with a dagger are ended by the manly 
thrust of a soldier's sword. She had borne a daughter, 
Octavia, before the accession of her husband, and she was 
far advanced in child-bearing when Caligula was assas- 
sinated. Claudius, unable to believe his good fortune, 
expecting daily that some fresh movement would dislodge 
him from the throne, kept in the palace with her. A month 
after his accession she bore a son, Tiberius Claudius 
Germanicus (later known as Britannicus), and Claudius 
ventured out, to exhibit his heir to the people and express 
his joy. He never entirely lost his fear. Soldiers served 
him at table, and all who approached him were searched. 
But his clement and comparatively enlightened rule won 
him some popularity, his gluttony and weak wit were 
genially overlooked, and he gave promise of a prosperous 
reign. 

The first indication of the evil of his feeble dependence 
on Messalina and the freedmen occurred before the end 
of the year 41. Claudius had recalled from exile Caligula's 
sisters, Julia Livilla and Agrippina, and restored their 
property. Agrippina, whose character and career will 
occupy the next chapter, was in her twenty-fifth year, 
Livilla in her twenty-third. Both had the beauty of the 
Julian women in its ripest development. Agrippina 
quickly realized her situation and discreetly concealed 
her ambition, but the younger woman was too proud to 
be diplomatic, and she was suspected of an ambition which 
she possibly did not entertain. Messalina became jealous, 
and denounced her to Claudius for adultery. Claudius 
was persuaded that an open trial would entail scandal on 
the Imperial family, and the unfortunate woman was exiled 
without the chance of defence. She was starved to death 



m THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

in her prison shortly afterwards, and, when the further 
course of this story has been read, one will hardly hesitate 
to accept the assurance of the chroniclers that this grave 
crime was committed by the orders of Messalina. 

That the charge against Livilla was malignant cannot 
be doubted when we learn that her lover was said to be 
the famous Stoic moralist, Seneca. The disease of Rome 
had already evoked a natural remedy. The austere code 
of morals which Zeno had formulated some centuries 
earlier in the marble colonnade at Athens was now 
adopted by the best of the Romans. Pointing to the 
enfeeblement and degradation which this epidemic of 
Eastern vice and luxury had brought on their city, the 
philosophers argued that the curb must be placed once 
more on sensual impulse, and the old virility of Rome 
restored. Seneca was the most distinguished representa- 
tive of this growing school at Rome, and, ambiguous 
or even reprehensible as his conduct may seem to us at 
a later stage, we should in this case prefer to attribute 
his punishment to the known vice of MessaHna rather 
than to a frailty on his part of which we have no indica- 
tion. The wise and just counsel that he gave to Claudius 
was probably distasteful to Messalina and the freedmen. 
Without trial or defence he was banished to Corsica. It 
is sometimes said that, as Seneca nowhere impeaches the 
virtue of Messalina, we may distrust the charge of vice 
against her which we find in all the later chroniclers ; 
but Seneca also fails to refer to her greater and quite 
indisputable misdeeds, so that the omission has no signifi- 
cance. Seneca remained in exile six years, and had no 
more personal knowledge than Suetonius of the debauches 
of Messalina. 

Her first success emboldened the Empress. Within a 
few months she selected another lady, Julia, the daughter 
of Drusus, and denounced her to Claudius. Such virtue 
or discernment as Claudius may have possessed was now 
attenuated by the sensual excesses in which his wife and 
his ministers encouraged him to indulge, and his humanity 



VALERIA MESSALINA 67 

was contaminated by the passion for gladiatorial displays 
which he graiually contracted. We must not too hastily 
admit the lowest estimate of his powers. If Octavian 
could be so long and so easily duped by Julia, we may 
admit that Claudius's ignorance was consistent with some 
measure of good sense, which he still displayed in pro- 
vincial administration and the accomplishment of public 
works. But from the end of the first year of his reign 
he lends himself so basely and ignobly to the schemes 
of Messalina that it is impossible to defend him. No 
sooner did his wife accuse Julia than she was banished, 
without trial, and it is easy to believe that her speedy 
death at the hands of the centurion in charge of her was 
due to the orders of Messalina. It was said that Julia 
had excited the Empress's suspicions by too tender a 
regard for Claudius. 

The more prudent Agrippina now sought the protection 
of a husband. She is said to have chosen the future 
Emperor, Sulpicius Galba, and urged him to divorce his 
ailing wife ; but the wife's mother took her part, and 
ended the intrigue by boxing Agrippina's ears in public. 
The wife died soon afterwards, but Galba feared the 
resentment of Messalina too much to wed Agrippina. 
She then induced Crispus Passienus, a wealthy and dis- 
tinguished noble and a famous orator, to divorce his wife 
and marry her. She had inherited a moderate fortune 
from an earlier husband — the father of her son, the future 
Emperor Nero — and the great wealth and distinction of 
Passienus put her in a much stronger position. Passienus 
died soon afterwards, leaving his fortune to Agrippina 
and Nero. How the fortune was used for the advance- 
ment of mother and son, and how Agrippina was 
eventually murdered by her son, will be told in the next 
chapter. Serviez repeats without hesitation a rumour, 
lightly reproduced in one of the chronicles, that she 
murdered Passienus to secure the wealth. The charge 
is of the most frivolous character. Her husband had 
afforded her some protection : a fortune without a 



68 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

husband would rather attract than divert the passion 
of Messalina. 

The year 42 was marked by a conspiracy that un- 
happily disposed Claudius more than ever to confide in 
Messalina and the freedmen. The troops in Dalmatia 
were to be employed in the dethronement of Claudius. 
At the last moment, however, the soldiers were startled 
by so many and such undeniable signs of the anger 
of the gods that they returned to their loyalty and 
slew their officers. The standards could not be dragged 
out of the ground — a not unnatural event, one would 
think, in a Dalmatian winter — and the wreaths had fallen 
from the eagles. 

The plot was reported to the palace, and Messalina 
and the freedmen drew up long lists of men whom it was 
desirable to remove or despoil. Wealthier men redeemed 
their lives by paying considerable sums ; others were put 
to the torture, or were consigned to prison or the grave. 
A story is told in the record of this persecution which 
should guard us from admitting the common fallacy that 
the older spirit of Rome was quite extinct. A distin- 
guished patrician heard that his name was on the list 
of the condemned. His wife urged him to escape the 
ignominy of a public execution by ending his own life, 
and, when he hesitated, she buried the dagger in her own 
bosom, and then handed it to him with the words, worthy 
of a Corneille : " It does not hurt." Another victim was 
Appius Silanus, who had married Messalina's mother, 
Domitia Lepida. The chroniclers say that his crime was 
to have rejected the advances which Messalina made to 
him. Whatever the motive was, she induced the freed- 
man Narcissus to tell Claudius that he saw, in a dream, 
Silanus thrusting a dagger into the Emperor's heart. 
Claudius nervously consulted his wife, who confessed, 
with artistic horror, that the same dream had frequently 
tormented her. They had meantime summoned Silanus 
to the palace, and, as he entered at that moment, the 
Emperor ordered him to be executed at once. 



VALERIA MESSALINA 69 

Such are a few of the dark crimes attributed to Messa- 
lina that we cannot seriously question, and that fully 
prepare us to believe the less inhuman misdeeds which it 
might otherwise be possible to doubt. In the following 
year (a.d. 43) Claudius went to Britain, leaving his Empress 
at Rome. It seems to have been at this time that, unless 
we are arbitrarily to set aside one group of charges in 
the records and admit another, Messalina indulged in the 
practices which have secured for her an unenviable 
immortality. The perfectly authentic sequel of the story 
will show that she had so extraordinary a disregard for 
even the pretence of moral feeling that the statements of 
the chroniclers cannot for a moment be set down as im- 
probable. In a word, Messalina surpassed Caligula both 
in her own misconduct and in the propagation of vice. 
Envying the trade of the lowest women of Rome, she had 
one of the rooms at the palace equipped on the model of 
the chambers of the meretrices in the tenements of the 
Subura, put over the door the name of one of the most 
notorious women of that caste, Lycisca, and offered the 
lascivious embrace of an Empress to any who cared to pay 
the price for which she stipulated. Others place the scene 
in an actual brothel. Not content with her own abasement, 
she compelled the most distinguished ladies of Rome to 
follow her example. She bestowed the honours and offices, 
which Claudius left at her disposal, on the husbands who 
would complacently witness the defilement of their wives, 
and offered the alternative of her deadly lists to those who 
refused. Uncertain as we must always be whether these 
statements are not mere exaggerations of her conduct in the 
popular mind of the time, they are consistent enough with 
the accredited facts of her career. 

In the year 44 Claudius returned with joy to what he 
still regarded as the chaste and tender arms of his young 
Empress. So lively was his esteem of her virtue that he 
obtained from the Senate permission for her to ride in 
the ceremonious car {carpentum), an honour which was 
restricted to the priestly rank and rigorously forbidden to 



70 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

women. He granted her, also, the signal distinction of 
riding in his chariot on the day of his triumphal procession. 
The ease with which she duped him led her to fresh 
excesses. It is said that when she saw his wine-soaked 
body laid to bed at night, she placed one of. her maids with 
him, and went with the companions of her debauches. If 
we may believe a story which has no inherent improb- 
ability, and has some confirmation later, she made the 
blind Emperor himself purvey to her vices. She one day 
complained to Claudius that the popular actor, Mnester, 
would not obey her when she commanded him to leave the 
stage and enter her private service. Claudius forced him 
to do so ; and three years later, when Messalina's conduct 
was exposed, Mnester exhibited to the Emperor the scars 
on his body which gave proof of Messalina's brutal 
familiarity. Even when she used the bronze coinage of 
Caligula, which had been withdrawn from circulation, to 
make a statue to Mnester, Claudius suspected nothing. 

This licentious conduct continued until the year 47. 
Messalina was only in her twenty-fifth year when her long 
impunity led her to take the step which ruined her. A 
bust of her that is preserved at Florence, and a cameo at 
Vienna, give a representation of her that we have no 
inclination to distrust. The curly golden-yellow hair — 
Juvenal tells us its colour — is elaborately dressed over the 
low forehead, and the large deep-set eyes are abnormally 
close. There is some irregularity in the undeniable beauty 
of the face ; and the thin lips and small mouth, drooping 
weakly at the corners, would irresistibly suggest a record 
of adventure, if such a story were not assigned to her in 
the chronicles of the time. With that record before us it 
is, no doubt, easy for physiognomists to detect a moral 
distortion in the features, and to discover unknown, as 
well as verify the known, vices of the Empress in the 
truthful marble. Yet any thoughtful observer will be 
disposed to see in those pitiless lineaments a revelation 
of the truth about Messalina and her race. It is a pic- 
ture of strength worn to decay by reiterated storms of 




MESSALINA 

BUST IN THE UFFIZI PALACE, FLORENCE 



VALERIA MESSALINA 71 

passion, of beauty fading with the disease which foreruns 
death. 

One last crime must be added to the record of Messalina 
before we come to the crowning folly of her career. There 
remained one woman in Rome more beautiful than she ; 
and one distinguished patrician whose virtue rebuked her, 
and whose wealth allured her. She resolved to bury the 
two under a common ruin. 

Valerius Asiaticus, a patrician of consular rank and 
great merit, had withdrawn from Rome to Crete as the 
madness of Messalina and the blindness of Claudius 
increased. Unhappily for him, he owned the beautiful 
and famous garden which Lucullus had laid out on the 
summit of the Pincian Hill, and Messalina was now eager 
for it. She employed the tutors of her children to declare 
to the Emperor that Asiaticus was at the head of an 
important faction at Rome, and had gone to fire the Eastern 
provinces with his rebellious spirit. The omens which 
were reported from the East seemed to Claudius to make 
mere human testimony superfluous. The moon had been 
darkened by an eclipse, and a new island had risen from 
the ^gaean Sea. The Chaldaean sages interpreted these 
signs with their customary art, and Asiaticus was brought 
to Rome. 

He listened in disdain to the charge of conspiracy 
and adultery which the tutors, Sosibius and Suillius, 
brought against him, but, when they proceeded to accuse 
him of unnatural vice, he broke into an angry denial of the 
whole accusation. Messalina was present at the trial — a 
wholly irregular proceeding, in Claudius's chamber — and 
saw that the Emperor was moved. She whispered to 
Vitellius, the sycophant who had first discovered Caligula's 
divinity and shaded his eyes from the blaze, that Asiaticus 
must on no account escape, and left the room. Vitellius, with 
ready wit, fell at the feet of the Emperor. He enlarged at 
length on the great merits of the accused, and concluded 
with an artful plea that Claudius would grant Asiaticus 
the favour of being allowed to take his own life, instead 



72 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

of handing him over to the public executioner. Easily 
confused by this stratagem, and fancying that he was 
showing some clemency, Claudius assented. Asiaticus, 
true to the finest traditions of his fathers, returned to his 
palace, bathed and supped in perfect tranquillity, and then 
opened his veins. Messalina secured the gardens of 
Lucullus. 

The lady with whom Asiaticus is said to have offended 
was Poppaea Sabina, the only woman in Rome who sur- 
passed Messalina in beauty. That would be quite enough 
to arouse the jealousy of Messalina, but we are told that 
she had the still greater mortification of believing that 
Poppaea was too intimate with the actor Mnester, whom 
the Empress had appropriated. The daughter of Poppaea 
will presently come before our eyes in the gallery of 
Roman Empresses, and, if we may infer from her conduct 
the nature of her mother's precepts and example, we cannot 
set aside the charge as improbable. There is, however, no 
need for us to discuss it. No sooner was Asiaticus con- 
demned than Messalina sent the news to Poppaea, and she 
put an end to her own life. Sosibius received a million 
sesterces, in the form of a special reward for his service in 
instructing the young princes ; and other ministers to the 
cruelty, avarice, and passion of the Empress were richly 
endowed. 

Messalina now ventured upon so flagrant a violation, 
not merely of decency, but of the moderate discretion that 
had hitherto concealed her conduct from her husband, that 
her career of infamy was brought to a violent close. She 
had for some time entertained and indulged a passion for 
Caius Silius, one of the most handsome men among the 
Roman nobility. Tacitus assures us that there was no 
secrecy in the amour. She persuaded Silius to divorce his 
wife, visited his house with a large retinue, and made him 
repeated gifts of slaves and other property belonging to 
the Imperial house. An obscure passage in Tacitus seems 
to imply that her impatience of all laws led her to form the 
design of marrying Silius while married to Claudius, and 



VALERIA MESSALINA 73 

the details of what immediately followed have come down 
to us in contradictory versions. It is said by some that 
Silius proposed to her to remove Claudius and share the 
throne with him, and that she hesitated only from fear 
that Silius might divorce her as soon as he had secured the 
purple. Other writers say that the phoenix appeared in 
Egypt, as it had done before the death of Tiberius, and that 
the nervous Emperor was further told of a prediction that the 
husband of Messalina would die before the end of the year. 
In order to cheat this decree of the fates, Suetonius says, 
Claudius signed the divorce of Messalina, and went down 
to the coast, leaving her free to marry Silius. He intended 
to return and recover her as soon as Silius had fulfilled the 
prophecy by dying. 

It is clear that a good deal of legend has mingled with 
the true account of the events which led to Messalina's 
downfall, and one can merely try to construct a plausible 
story out of the discordant versions. Tacitus, the highest 
authority, knows nothing of the prophecy, or the divorce 
which it is said to have occasioned. His silence is not 
conclusive, and the course attributed to Claudius, however 
extravagant it may seem, is not inconsistent with his 
abnormally timorous nature. On the whole, however, one 
is disposed to agree with Merivale, that Claudius heard of 
no prophecy, signed no divorce, and knew nothing of the 
liaison until a later stage, as Dio implies. But Merivale 
is plainly wrong in suggesting that the marriage of 
Messalina and Silius is a libellous legend borrowed from 
Agrippina's memoirs. When he submits that such a 
marriage could not have taken place without the Emperor's 
knowledge, he forgets that, as all the authorities state or 
imply, Claudius had left Rome and gone down to the 
coast. The Emperor returned to the city as soon as he 
heard of the marriage. 

The real course of events seems to be that Claudius 
was vaguely informed of the existence of a conspiracy 
against him. He complained bitterly to the Senate, con- 
fined himself for some time to the palace, and then, in 



74 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

October, went to Ostia to inspect certain public works 
which were in progress there. Delighted at his removal, 
Messalina went through the form of marriage — the laxer, 
not the more solemn, form {confarreatid) — with Silius, and 
cast aside the last shade of reserve. Base as her nature 
was, she must have been weary of the nightly spectacle 
of the repulsive old man sinking back in satiety on his 
couch, while slaves tickled his throat with a feather to 
induce a vomit. Silius was young, handsome, and not 
without wit. A better future seemed to open before her. 
Perhaps the slow-witted Emperor would make no struggle 
for his throne ; perhaps the city and the guards would 
gladly sacrifice him for this handsome young Imperial pair. 
There is calculation in the carven face of Messalina. But 
the news was speeding to Ostia, and the dreadful end 
was near. 

Shortly after the marriage came the festival of the 
vintage, the Bacchanalia, which was celebrated by the bride 
and bridegroom and their friends with the wildest merri- 
ment. That last scene in the licentious career of Messalina 
must have made a deep impression on the feeling of Rome, 
and it is lit up for ever by one of Tacitus's most vivid 
flashes of description. Messalina had bestowed on Silius 
the Imperial palace and its contents, and in the garden of 
the palace they paid full honour to the orgiastic cult of 
Bacchus. Wine-presses were set up, and the women 
of Messalina's company, their white limbs and bosoms 
scantily covered with strips of fawn skin, sang and danced 
the Bacchic dance round the large vats of grape-juice. 
Messalina, her golden hair flowing loose under her ivy 
wreath, shook her thyrsus and led the wild dance. Silius 
lay at her feet, crowned with ivy, nodding his head to the air 
of the lascivious chorus. Wine flowed freely on that autumn 
afternoon, and the gay world and distant Ostia were for- 
gotten ; or so little heeded that when Vettius Valens, one 
of Messalina's discarded lovers, had, in boyish exuberance, 
climbed a high tree, and they crowded round and asked 
what he saw, he gaily cried : " A hurricane from Ostia." 



VALERIA MESSALINA 75 

But before the evening was out the hurricane came from 
Ostia and scattered the revellers in terror. News was 
brought to the garden that Claudius was hurrying to Rome 
to avenge his dishonour. 

The freedman Narcissus had disliked the idea of Silius 
obtaining power, especially as Messalina had recently 
taken the ominous step of securing the execution of his 
colleague Polybius. In the suite of Claudius at Ostia 
were two female attendants, to describe them courteously, 
Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who were taken into counsel by 
Narcissus, and learned their parts in his scheme. Calpur- 
nia flung herself at the feet of the Emperor, crying, 
" Messalina is married to Silius." Cleopatra and Narcissus 
were summoned by the Emperor, and they assured him 
that his life was in danger, and he must hasten to Rome. 
Other advisers, who had been trained to their part by 
Narcissus, were drawn into the group, and the dazed and 
vacillating Claudius yielded to their guidance. He was 
at once placed in his chariot, and Vitellius and Narcissus 
rode with him, Claudius feebly discussed the news as 
they travelled, and Vitellius, not sure which party would 
triumph, remained silent; but the freedman assiduously 
fed the slow-kindling anger of the Emperor. 

Silius had fled from the Bacchanalian garden to the 
P^orum, and tried to conceal his part by a zealous absorp- 
tion in business. Messalina saw all the companions of 
her revels fly for safety, and leave her to face the storm 
alone in the palace-garden. From the disordered relics 
of the feast she hurried to her Lucullan gardens on the 
Pincian. There her courage seems to have revived, and 
she determined to make an effort to disarm her husband. 
Directing the head of the Vestal Virgins to follow with 
her children, she went out upon the road which entered 
Rome from Ostia. The news had now spread over Rome. 
With three companions only out of the gay throng of 
her followers, and Vibidia, the Vestal Virgin, whose person 
was sacred, she braved the pitiless gaze of the citizens, 
who had so long seen her chariot flash by in triumph, and 



•je THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

walked on foot to the gate of the city. There her strength 
failed, and she was forced to mount the common cart of 
a gardener. When they had covered a short distance 
from the gates, they saw the Emperor's chariot approach- 
ing, and she dismounted. Whether from real affection 
for her, or from an indolent dislike of trouble, Claudius 
hesitated once more when the piteous figure of his young 
wife appeared in his path ; but Narcissus reminded him 
of her marriage, and ordered the charioteer to drive on. 
Her last despairing appeal was unheeded. The chariot 
galloped on, and left her standing on the road. A little 
further on the Vestal Virgin, relying on her high position, 
demanded that Claudius should grant his wife an oppor- 
tunity of defending herself, and thrust his children before 
him. The sight of his beloved Octavia and Britannicus 
again moved the wavering Emperor. Narcissus bade the 
charioteer drive onward, and Messalina slowly turned to 
meet her fate in Rome. 

In order to dispel the last shade of tenderness from 
the Emperor's mind, Narcissus conducted him first to the 
house of Silius, and showed him the treasures of the 
Imperial palace which Messalina had showered on her 
lover. He then led him to the camp of the Praetorian 
Guards, and induced him to make a speech to the soldiers. 
The feeble spirit of the Emperor was cowed by the fulh 
revelation of Messalina's perfidy. Now completely docile 
to the masterful freedman, he took his place at the tri- 
bunal, and passed sentence of death, which was at once 
carried out, on Silius, Mnester, Vettius Valens, and all 
Messalina's accomplices. Mnester vainly stripped off his 
robe, to show that he had received from the Empress 
rather the imprint of her anger than the embraces of 
which he was accused. The Emperor signed the doom 
of all, and returned wearily to the palace. Restored by 
food and wine, he began to resist the dictation of Nar- 
cissus, and ordered him to inform Messalina that he would 
hear her on the morrow. The freedman knew that a 
delay would ruin his design. He left the room, and told 



VALERIA MESSALINA ^j 

the guard that the Emperor had commanded the imme- 
diate execution of his wife. 

Messalina had returned to her garden on the Pincian, 
where she was joined by her mother. Night had come 
on, and they sat in an arbour debating the mad brilliance 
of the past and the terrible gloom of the future. Domitia 
Lepida felt that there was no hope of recovering the favour 
of Claudius, and urged her daughter to end her life as 
Roman tradition prescribed. Strong only in her clinging 
to life, like most of the other frail women of the Julian 
house, Messalina fell at her mother's feet and sobbed. 
Presently the stillness of the deserted garden was broken 
by the tramp of soldiers and a summons at the gate. Still 
Messalina shrank from the eternal darkness which she 
had so suddenly confronted. Only when the officer of 
the guard told her the order that Narcissus had given 
him, and the freedman who had come with the guard 
began insolently to revile her for her crimes, did she take 
the dagger from her mother's hands. In the light of the 
single lamp of the arbour the little group looked on with 
pity and disdain, as the nerveless hands of Messalina 
lacerated her white bosom with futile gashes. Then the 
tribune mercifully drove his sword through her heart. 
Her children came up, and found their mother's lifeless 
body in a pool of blood. 

This authentic closing of the career of Messalina must 
dispose us to think that there may be little or no exaggera- 
tion in the stories that are told of her. Stahr, in his 
brilliant apologetic study of the Empresses, ventures to say 
that Seneca did not reproduce these stories about Messa- 
lina because he knew that they came from the pen of an 
embittered libeller; and it is safe to assume that Tacitus 
did derive much of his material from the memoirs of the 
woman who had shrunk from the vindictive cruelty of 
Messalina, and came in time to replace her. But so much 
crime is authoritatively laid to the account of the Empress, 
and her last adventure reveals so shameless a disregard of 
either law or decency, that not a single detail is incredible 



78 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

or improbable. We shall find such excesses ascribed to 
later Emperors, by writers who were not merely recording 
rumours that may have gathered volume during decades 
of passage from mouth to mouth, that nothing can be 
deemed impossible to a Messalina. The humane biographer 
can but plead that she entered a world of the most dazzling 
allurement of vice and crime with a nature already tainted 
and distorted by the sins of her fathers, and that the horror 
of that last scene in the gardens of Lucullus may be left 
as a merciful shroud over her unhappy memory. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MOTHER OF NERO 

TACITUS has given us a spirited picture of life in the 
Imperial palace during the months which followed 
the execution of Messalina. Claudius himself had 
sunk into a state of drowsy indifference when the storm 
excited by his discovery had spent itself. *' Where is the 
Empress?" he asked, as he sat at supper the night after 
her death, and noticed the empty place on the couch. 
Narcissus told him that she was dead, and he asked no 
more. But the palace about his slumbering figure soon 
began to hum with conflicting intrigues for the succession 
to her chamber. Ladies who had visited the Palatine with 
nervous prudence while Messalina lived now came to dis- 
play their charms, and express their tenderness, to the 
doting Emperor. From the sombre night of the tragedy 
Rome passed with relief to the light enjoyment of the new 
comedy. The freedmen, who surrounded and controlled 
Claudius, selected their candidates. 

Claudius had inserted one sentiment of his own in the 
speech which Narcissus had induced him to make to the 
Praetorian Guards. He had sworn that he would not 
marry again. There were ladies in his household, such as 
Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who would encourage the resolu- 
tion ; but the freedmen decided that he was bound to 
capitulate under so fair a siege, and it would be better 
to have some share in the making of the new Empress, 
Each of the Greeks chose a different lady. Narcissus, who 
had been promoted to high public service for his zeal, 

79 



8o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

favoured the suit of JElia. Paetina, whom Claudius had 
lightly divorced twenty-one years before. Callistus took 
up the cause of Lollia Paulina, the wealthy and beautiful 
woman whom Caligula had torn from her husband and 
used so unjustly. The steward, Pallas, was more fortunate 
in his choice. He advocated marriage with Agrippina ; 
and, as the mind of Agrippina coincided more decisively 
with that of her champion than seems to have happened 
in the case of her rivals, his campaign succeeded. She 
discovered a most tender and considerate affection for 
her uncle, visited him assiduously, and persuaded him to 
betroth his daughter Octavia to her son Lucius Domitius 
(later Nero). 

Octavia was already betrothed, and Agrippina is said 
to have removed the first obstacle to her designs by a cruel 
and unscrupulous act. We are told that she induced, 
and it is at least clear that she permitted, the sycophantic 
courtier Vitellius, who favoured her suit, to accuse the 
young man, to whom Octavia was betrothed, of incest 
with his daughter-in-law. Tacitus has so mean an estimate 
of the young people and their generation that he does 
not regard the charge as a serious libel. He insists, 
however, that Agrippina had the case against them forged, 
and thus opened her dark Imperial career with a crime. 

We are now approaching the generation in which the 
great historian lived, and we are considering the very 
woman whose memoirs furnished him with his more 
serious charges against her rivals and predecessors. It 
may therefore seem strange that, if we are to follow our 
authorities with docility, we must ascribe a very vicious 
and unscrupulous character to Agrippina herself. We have 
rejected the rumour that she poisoned her second husband, 
but that is by no means the only charge that is brought 
against her before she married Claudius. The authorities 
uniformly assert that she had had incestuous relations 
with Caligula in her early teens, had been notorious for her 
amours during the life of Messalina, and now very flagrantly 
placed such honour as she had at the disposal of Claudius, 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 8i 

These charges we cannot control. We shall find even 
more serious accusations against her later, and shall have 
to regard them with reserve or frank incredulity. It 
was the literary fashion to make a consort of the Caesars 
imperial in her vices. On the whole, however, we are 
compelled to think that the eldest daughter of Agrippina 
and Germanicus had the taint of her stock. She inherited 
the virile ambition of her mother, and she had even less 
scruple in pursuing it. The best that can be said for her 
is that she aimed rather at making the future of her son 
than her own. And when that son proves to be the 
Emperor Nero, the murderer of his mother, we are disposed 
to read her record with the lenient eye of pity. 

When the elder Agrippina had been banished by 
Tiberius, as we saw, in the year 12 a.d,, her children 
were brought up in the house of their grandmother 
Antonia. In this plain home of old Roman virtue 
Caligula is said to have infected and corrupted all his 
sisters. Agrippina left it, in her thirteenth year, to 
marry Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. As the authorities 
are sharply divided in regard to his character, we cannot 
trace his influence in the development of her character. 
He died in the year 40, leaving her with a three-year-old 
boy, Lucius Domitius. Agrippina was still a young and 
beautiful woman, and is said to have availed herself of 
the loose morals of Roman society until, as we saw, the 
attitude of Messalina forced her to marry. She was soon 
a widow for the second time, with considerable wealth. Her 
ambition revived at the death of Messalina, and she paid 
the most winning and flagrant attentions to Claudius. We 
should go beyond the letter of the chronicles if we sug- 
gested that she bribed Vitellius and Pallas to promote her 
suit. It is enough to say that they overcame the reluctance 
of Claudius, and they profited materially by her accession 
to the throne. 

Claudius professed that he had a scruple about marrying 
his niece, and proposed to adopt her as his daughter. 
That empty honour was hardly recompense enough for 
6 



82 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the daily contemplation of his senility and sensuality, 
Vitellius induced him to submit his delicate feeling to 
the Senate and the people, and then artfully represented 
to the Senators that, if Claudius married Agrippina, she 
might rid them of the hated influence of the freedmen. 
Tacitus, whose disdain for the obsequious Senate of the 
early Empire always aggravates his comments on their 
conduct, describes how they raced each other to the palace 
to inform Claudius of their decision, and how the people 
not improbably incited by Vitelhus, assembled below the 
Palatine Hill and clamoured for the marriage. The obtuse 
and weak-willed Claudius assented, and a few days later, 
in the year 49, Agrippina became the sixth Empress of 
Rome. Little did she dream that she was entering upon 
the last decade of her eventful life, and that it would close 
with the most ghastly horror. 

She was in her thirty-third year, Claudius in his fifty- 
eighth. Years of sensual indulgence had not improved 
his character or his intelligence, and no one in Rome 
can have expected him to live more than the few years 
which remained for him. Agrippina was looking to the 
time when she would be sole mistress of the Empire. 
The fine statue of her which is exhibited in the Lateran 
Museum has a moral physiognomy so concordant with 
the authentic record of her career that we picture her 
to ourselves with confidence. In face and figure she is 
all that the word imperial suggests to the imagination. 
Haughty, strong, and reposeful in her self-reliance, she 
has lost the last shade of apprehension with the passing of 
Messalina, and has the majestic air of a mistress of the 
world. Her low brow and large, finely-carved oval face 
are said by some physiognomists to have every mark 
of purity and refinement, but the close observer will dis- 
cover in her features only such a refinement of passion 
as her ambition would lead us to expect. In a word, it 
is the face of a woman who will not stoop to vice or crime 
to gratify a sensual impulse, but may have recourse to 
either when her ambition lends it a certain expediency. 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 83 

The career of Agrippina shows that she really was a 
moral opportunist of this character. We need not pass 
any censure on her ambition. Unhappy would be the 
State in which men and women were not at times fired 
by the impulse to exert their powers more energetically 
than their fellows. But it is impossible to ignore the 
persistent and harmonious statements of the Latin historians 
in regard to the way in which Agrippina pursued her 
ambition. We may overlook the amorous adventures of 
her earlier years ; we may reject, as a light and implausible 
rumour, eagerly caught up by prurient diarists, the charge 
that she made any dishonourable advances to Claudius 
before her marriage, or to the steward Pallas or her son 
Nero at later dates ; and we may hesitate to admit that she 
was concerned in the murder of Claudius. But we cannot 
find any other motive than a not too nice ambition in her 
marrying the aged and repulsive Emperor, and we have 
strong reason to suspect her of conduct that is little short 
of criminal in many of the events that follow. 

The most formidable of her rivals for the throne had 
been Lollia Paulina. Beautiful, wealthy, and popular, the 
former wife of Caligula seemed to threaten Agrippina's 
security. In their eagerness to avoid the rock of hereditary 
power the Romans had steered their vessel into the 
Charybdis of intrigue, and any prominent man or woman 
was regarded with concern by the one who wore the 
purple, or aspired to wear it. Agrippina had a strong and 
legitimate hope, but no guarantee, that her son would 
succeed. Messalina's son, young Britannicus, was ailing 
and epileptic, and was generally ignored in the speculations 
as to the succession. It was, therefore, quite natural that 
Roman gossip should accuse Agrippina of destroying 
Paulina, and Tacitus is not less generous in recording the 
charges against her than in admitting her slanders against 
Livia. He affirms positively that it was the Empress who 
persuaded Claudius to have Paulina prosecuted on the 
charge of consulting oracles and astrologers as to the 
duration of his marriage, and that, when her property was 



84 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

confiscated and she was sent into exile, Agrippina sent a 
soldier to compel her to commit suicide. Dio, as usual, 
improves upon the narrative. He describes Agrippina 
gloating over the bleeding head of her rival, as Fulvia had 
rejoiced over the head of Cicero, and opening the mouth 
to see certain peculiarities of the teeth by which it might 
be identified. 

The fatal defect of Dio's more vivid account is that, as 
we know from Pliny, the double canine teeth, of which he 
speaks, belonged to Agrippina herself, not to Paulina, and 
were regarded as a sure presage of good fortune. The 
substance of the story, however, we cannot lightly reject. 
A beautiful and happy woman was driven to death for no 
graver cause than, at the most, an idle patronage of the 
Oriental charlatans who then abounded in Rome ; and, since 
this consultation of oracles was common, there must have 
been a special reason for the selection of Paulina. The 
motive suggested by Tacitus is only too probable. He 
adds that Agrippina also banished a lady named Calpurnia. 
If we may identify this lady with the Calpurnia whose 
services to Claudius were so amiable as to embolden her 
to disclose to him the crimes of his beloved Messalina, she 
would hardly remain long in the palace of Agrippina. 

Apart from such episodes as these, in which jealousy 
or avarice led her to make an unworthy use of her power, 
she ruled judiciously and serviceably. Claudius was in his 
sixtieth year. His poor mind was in complete decay, and 
it was both fitting and useful that Agrippina should rule 
in his name. The coinage of the time bears witness of her 
activity. There is, in fact, a living memorial of her rule 
in the city of Cologne, which, under the title of Colonia 
Agrippina, she established as an outpost of civilization on 
the farthest confines of the Empire. She gave dignity and 
etiquette to the easy-going court of Claudius, had the right 
to enter the precincts of the Capitol and to ride in the 
gilded imperial chariot of ceremony, and, when the famous 
British prince Caractacus was brought to Rome, her throne 
was raised by the side of that of the Emperor. The older 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 85 

Roman idea of woman's sphere was now discredited by 
the philosophers and contemptuously ignored by the 
women themselves, but the citizens moved slowly, and 
there was much discontent and consulting of astrologers. 
They were expelled from the city, but in the guarded 
chambers of patrician families they continued, in imposing 
Chaldaean dress, to scan horoscopes and wave preternatural 
wands over their symbolical tripods — much as they do in 
Bond Street to-day. The more enlightened reader, who 
is disposed to regard the superstition with leniency, must 
reflect that the prophets might at times, for the vindication 
of their art, be tempted to lend a little human aid when 
nature tarried in bringing about the deaths which the 
planets had so plainly foretold. 

Within the palace the whole care of Agrippina was 
centred in the education of her son for the purple. To the 
delight of Rome, she recalled the philosopher Seneca from 
exile, and gave him charge of her son's studies. When 
the real character of Nero was revealed in later years, it 
was said that Seneca had always disliked his task, and had 
even predicted that the boy would become a savage monster. 
Seneca himself merely says that the boy was spoiled, and 
his training thwarted, by his mother. Nero would fly to 
Agrippina when Seneca had made some attempt to check 
his wayward impulses, and the whole lesson would be 
lost in her injudicious caresses. Apart from this not 
unnatural weakness, Agrippina made the most commend- 
able efforts to prepare her son for the throne. The corrupt 
tutor whom Messalina had brought to the palace was 
dismissed — Dio says that he was executed for attempting 
the life of Lucius Domitius — to make way for the most 
distinguished moralist of the time, and the military instruc- 
tion was entrusted to Burrus, whose integrity we shall 
learn presently. Pallas was rewarded with such honours 
as no freedmen had ever borne before, and Vitellius was 
rescued from some obscure charge of conspiracy and 
restored to his rank. 

Agrippina was now in a position of very great wealth 



86 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

and power. She drove about Rome in a superb chariot, 
flaunted the stored jewels of the Imperial house, and 
received presents from the ends of the earth. A white 
nightingale, which had cost 6,000 sesterces, and a talking 
thrush were amongst the rare presents sent to conciliate 
her. The lingering of Claudius must have been irksome 
to her, but it was necessary to secure the succession of 
her son before the Emperor died. The one apparent 
obstacle was the boy Britannicus, who, as the son of 
Claudius and Messalina, had a juster title to be chosen. 
He was, however, subject to epileptic fits, delicate in 
health, and peevish in temper. Agrippina had little diffi- 
culty in thrusting him aside in favour of her own handsome 
and engaging boy. The toga virilis, or garment of the 
man, was usually donned by the Roman youth in his 
seventeenth year, but the age was anticipated in the case 
of princes, and Domitius was to receive it at the end of 
the year 50. During the year, however, the convulsions 
of nature so plainly portended some momentous event, 
probably the passage of Claudius to join his divine fore- 
runners, that Agrippina pressed for the immediate perform- 
ance of the rite. Three suns were seen in the sky, an 
earthquake shook the solid earth, and birds of evil omen 
rested on the temple. Claudius assented, and manhood 
and other high distinctions were prematurely conferred 
on the future Emperor, whose name was changed to Nero. 
He joined the priestly college, received the authority of 
a proconsul, marched at the head of the guards, and drew 
the attention of all at the games by the insignia of his 
manly dignities, while Britannicus sat in the prcetexta and 
bulla of the boy. It was Nero who pleaded in the Senate 
for distressed cities, Nero who was made praetor when 
Claudius was absent from Rome. In the year 52 he was 
married to Octavia, and all Rome regarded him as the 
virtual heir to the throne. 

There can be no serious doubt that Agrippina had no 
affection for Claudius, and must have waited impatiently 
for his removal when the succession was secured for her 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 87 

son. Certainly Rome held that view, and interpreted the 
events of the succeeding years in accordance with it. 
We must therefore be prepared to find much libellous 
conjecture in the chronicles about this time. Serviez, who 
can never resist the fascination of scandal, gives us a 
lively picture of Agrippina stooping to any expedient 
course of vice or crime in the furtherance of her ambition. 
We may have to tell a less romantic story, but it will be 
romantic enough. 

It is clear that the Empress now entered into a conflict 
with Narcissus, the freedman who had ruined Messalina, 
and had then favoured the suit of ^lia Paetina in opposi- 
tion to her own. Her critics suggest that she wished to 
remove this faithful servant in order to attempt the life of 
the Emperor more easily, but the suggestion is superfluous. 
Narcissus had found the rival freedman Pallas raised to 
such high honours, and felt that his own service in exposing 
Messalina had been so soon forgotten, that he clearly 
intrigued against Agrippina. Tacitus says that it was 
he who spread the rumour, which reached the ears of 
Claudius, that Agrippina was too intimate with Pallas. 
We are quite unable to examine the truth or untruth of 
this charge, and may dismiss it. Agrippina took an early 
occasion to attack and discredit the Greek, In the centre 
of the Italian hills was a sheet of water, the Fucine Lake, 
which had no regular outlet, and often caused disastrous 
floods. Claudius ordered that a channel should be made 
to conduct its superfluous water to the river, and celebrated 
the opening of it, in the year 52, with a naval battle on 
the lake. Three thrones were erected : one for the nodding, 
heavy-paunched Emperor, who had somehow been squeezed 
into glittering armour, one for Agrippina, in her robes of 
gold cloth, and one for Nero. 

The play did not run smoothly, and Agrippina did not 
spare Narcissus, who controlled it. The great ships drew 
up before the Emperor, and the men who were about to 
risk or lose their lives to entertain him rang out the 
usual salutation. Forgetting that if he returned the salute 



88 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

he absolved them from their dangerous duty, Claudius 
hailed them, and they claimed the right to abstain. The 
Emperor is described by Suetonius as running alongside the 
lake, angrily urging them to fight. The battle proceeded, 
but at the close it was found that the water could not 
be released, and Narcissus was bitterly assailed. The 
performance was repeated later, when the works were 
pronounced complete, but a number of people were 
drowned, and the quarrel was renewed with spirit. Agrip- 
pina suggested that the funds for the undertaking had been 
diverted ; Narcissus foiled the attack with a charge of 
ambition against the Empress. 

The Emperor was visibly failing, and there was great 
excitement at Rome when, at the beginning of the year 54, 
nature announced once more that some stirring chapter 
was to run from the reel of the fates. The standards and 
tents of the soldiers were enveloped in mysterious flames ; 
a rain of blood, in which a modern naturalist would doubt- 
less discover an innocent microbe, spread terror over one 
part of the Empire, and the birth of a pig with claws like 
those of a hawk caused equal consternation in another ; 
while Rome heard, with reiterated shocks, that the doors 
of the temple of Jupiter had been opened by unseen hands, 
and a horrible comet, followed by the customary pestilence, 
had appeared in its skies. More significant still to prudent 
people, perhaps, was the report that Claudius, returning 
to dine at the palace after presiding at the trial of an 
adultress, gloomily observed that he had been unfortunate 
in his marriages ; he had punished one unfaithful wife, and 
would know how to deal with another. 

In this observation of Claudius we need see no more 
than an echo of the whispers of Narcissus, but one can 
imagine how Rome must have throbbed with expectation 
and abounded in gossip at the beginning of the year 54. 
Nor was this faith in natural oracles disappointed. Two 
tragedies were added to the sombre chronicle of the city 
in that year, and in both of them our Empress is accused 
of having acted criminally. 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 89 

The first was the condemnation to death of one of the 
greatest ladies of Rome, Domitia Lepida, sister-in-law of 
the Empress ; and in this case there is every reason to 
suspect a guilty action on the part of Agrippina. When 
Agrippina had been exiled by Caligula, her boy had lived 
for a few years with his father's sister, Domitia Lepida, 
the mother of Messalina, Lepida was far more indulgent 
even than Agrippina to the pretty and wayward child, 
and, when the mother returned to Rome and he was 
restored to her, there was an acrimonious struggle between 
the two women for his affection. As it became clear that 
he would inherit the purple, the struggle became more 
passionate. Narcissus saw in it an opportunity to escape 
the ruin which would befall him if Agrippina obtained 
full power, and, on the ground of his charge of incon- 
stancy against the Empress, he urged Claudius to make 
Lepida guardian of Nero. It is very probable that this 
intrigue of Narcissus is the only source of the charge 
of license brought against the Empress in her mature 
years. 

Angry and anxious, in view of the expected death of 
Claudius, she took a bold step, and impeached Lepida 
of criminal conduct. How far Lepida was guilty we can- 
not say, but as she was charged only with assailing the 
Emperor's marriage with imprecations, and exercising so 
little control over her Calabrian slaves as to endanger 
the public peace, the prudent reader will acquit Agrippina 
of anything more than an exaggeration of the facts. That 
exaggeration sufficed, however, to ruin her distinguished 
rival. Nero, schooled by his mother, gave witness that 
his aunt had tried to alienate his affection; her very 
natural comments on the Emperor's marriage were made 
to assume the dark form of magical imprecations ; she 
was condemned to death. 

But those lively convulsions of nature had portended 
something more momentous than the death of a noble 
matron, and Rome continued to wait for the great tragedy. 
Before long it was announced that Narcissus had retired 



90 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

to Sinuessa for the treatment of his gout.^ The Emperor 
was now entirely surrounded by adherents of Agrippina, 
and we can quite understand the conviction of Rome 
when Claudius was taken seriously ill at a banquet, and 
died within twenty-four hours. Tacitus emphatically 
attributes his death to his wife. Suetonius alone says 
that, while it was certain that Claudius was poisoned, it 
was not certain who was guilty; a feeble reserve, since 
Agrippina was so predominantly interested in his death. 

It is not surprising that recent historians have generally 
followed Tacitus. Roergas de Serviez, who rarely has 
such ample authority for the crimes he loves to attribute, 
fastens the murder on Agrippina without the least hesita- 
tion. Merivale sees no ground to question it, though he 
points out several inconsistencies in the pages of Tacitus. 
Mr. Henderson follows the traditional story in his recent 
and discriminating study of the reign of Nero.^ But Mr. 
Baring-Gould insists that the death of Claudius was quite 
natural, and any candid student of the evidence must 
admit that it is inconclusive. 

The facts are that on October 12th, a.d. 54, Claudius 
attended a banquet of the priestly college with Agrippina. 
After eating some mushrooms (or figs, according to others) 
from a dish that was served, he became violently ill and 
vomited. He was taken back to the palace, attended by 
his (and Agrippina's) physician, but gradually sank, and 
died on the morning of the 13th. The theory of the 
opponents of Agrippina is that she employed a notorious 
poisoner, Locusta — a Gaulish woman, who was certainly 
in Rome at the time, and was afterwards employed by 
Nero — to concoct a slow poison (" a drug that would 
disturb his mind and inflict a slow death," says Tacitus). 
This is supposed to have been inserted in a fine mushroom 
(or fig), which was taken by Claudius when Agrippina 

' Tacitus, who is followed by Merivale and other historians, makes 
Claudius also retire to Sinuessa. This is probably an error, as the Emperor 
fell ill and died at Rome. 

' " The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero,' 1903, 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 91 

had eaten one from the dish to encourage him. He fell 
back and began to vomit, and the theory runs that Agrip- 
pina, fearing that he might recover and suspect her, called 
in the physician Xenophon, a dependent of hers, who 
tickled the Emperor's throat with a poisoned feather and 
made an end of him, 

Mr. Baring-Gould points out that, since Tacitus ex- 
pressly describes the poison as " slow," Agrippina could 
hardly be surprised and alarmed when it did not take 
immediate effect. He concludes that Claudius contracted 
a violent indigestion from eating too many figs. This is 
no more convincing than the opposite theory. An attack 
of vomiting, whether from a natural cause or as an un- 
intended effect of poison, might easily alarm Claudius, 
who was very suspicious, and so induce Agrippina to act. 
An attack of indigestion, on the other hand, would hardly 
have so violent and immediate an effect. The circumstance 
of tickling his throat with a feather to cause a vomit, and 
at the same time introducing poison, is puzzling ; but it 
was an age of skill in poisoning, and the feat may have 
been possible. The question must remain open. The 
discrepancies in the narrative are not fatal to it, but the 
story itself is no more than a retailing of Roman gossip, 
which was at all times more prurient than scrupulous. 
The problem really turns on the character of Agrippina, 
and this is ambiguous enough to make us hesitate. One 
may scan the record of her career with the most pene- 
trating charity without discovering any plain indication 
of high character, while the ruin of LoUia Paulina, Domitia 
Lepida, and others, may be confidently traced to her. We 
can only conclude that she was quite capable of accelerating 
the death of her husband, and would have no light interest 
in doing so ; but the circumstances of his death are quite 
consistent with the kindlier view that it was due to his 
own intemperance. We have not yet, however, reached 
the close of her career, and it may be felt that her conduct 
after the death of Claudius confirms the darker estimate 
of her character. 



92 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

The malcontents of Rome would be sure to agitate in 
favour of Britannicus unless the succession was secured 
for Nero before the death of Claudius was known. The 
art with which Agrippina averted this danger may excite 
our admiration of her virility and astuteness, but must 
inevitably lessen our appreciation of her sensibility. She 
announced that Claudius was dangerously ill, and called 
an assembly of the Senate. Conscious that the servants 
of a palace commonly draw their pay from some one 
without, she put guards at every approach to the chamber 
of the dead man, and devised and carried out a tragi- 
comedy of the most extraordinary character. The clothes 
were drawn over the lifeless body, bandages and poultices 
were ostentatiously applied to it by her servants, and even 
the mimes, who had been wont to dance and ring their 
bells and crack their jokes before the Emperor, were 
brought in to perpetrate their follies in the chamber of 
death. In a neighbouring room Agrippina joined her 
conjugal sobs with the laments of the youthful Britan- 
nicus. We are asked to believe, and we have little diffi- 
culty in believing, that while she clung in tears to the 
weeping youth, she was merely, with cold calculation, 
preventing him from leaving the palace, lest he should 
fall in the way of the Guards, or some ambitious partisan, 
and be proclaimed Emperor. 

By noon the preparations of her agents were completed. 
The gates of the palace were thrown open, and Nero was 
sent out, under the care of his military tutor Burrus, the 
commander of the Guards. A few voices were heard to 
mutter the name of Britannicus, but the cry was feeble, 
and the response insignificant. The Guards were long 
accustomed to see the superiority of Nero over the 
sickly young prince, and their support was secured by 
a liberal promise of money. They conducted Nero to 
the Senate, and bade that helpless body accept him. 
The same evening a courier from Agrippina brought 
word to Sinuessa that Nero was Emperor. Narcissus 
had lost, and his figure passes from the scene — with the 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 93 

inevitable rumour that he was imprisoned or poisoned 
by Agrippina. 

When the Guards came to Nero that night for the 
watchword he gave them " The best of mothers," and 
Agrippina lool^ed confidently from her supreme height 
into the future. Within five years her son would put her 
to death with horrible brutality, and jeer at her naked 
bod}^ No one of the hundreds of thousands who hailed 
him with the wildest delight, and smiled at his amiable 
irregularities, can have foreseen so rapid and portentous 
a degradation. He was then a youth of seventeen, strik- 
ingly handsome both in face and figure, with blue-grey 
eyes and light curly hair and finely proportioned limbs. 
His tutor in arms pronounced him ** a young Apollo." 
But his moral and intellectual trainer had failed as signally 
as his physical trainer had succeeded. Seneca had vainly 
endeavoured to implant in his mind the germs of the 
noble Stoic philosophy. Men have disputed from all time 
whether it was the teacher or the doctrine that was at 
fault, while the eugenic school of our time would relieve 
both from censure, and regard Nero's mind as an incur- 
ably corrupt soil. One may venture to differ from both, 
and wonder if circumstances had not the greater share 
in his demoralization. However that may be, his accession 
to irresponsible power at such an age, in such surround- 
ings as we shall discover about him, was a tragedy. 
His real advisers were young men, slightly older than 
himself, and better versed in the ways of luxury and vice ; 
and the first use he made of his Imperial power was to 
toss aside the treatises of the moralists, and give his 
whole attention to art, to chariot-racing, and to dissipation. 
What sinister use he made of the later hours, or earlier 
hours, of the day, and in what melancholy condition his 
girl-wife must have been, we shall see in the next chapter. 
Here we have to consider only his relations with his 
mother. 

For a few years after Nero's accession his mother 
willingly and profitably ruled in his name. It must not 



94 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

be imagined that she had, with the astuteness of a Marie 
de' Medici, educated him in an indifference to politics so 
that she might indulge her own ambition. The appoint- 
ment of Seneca as his tutor is the most creditable, though 
unhappily the most futile, act of her career. When, how- 
ever, the young Emperor refused to be interested in an}^ 
problem graver than the art of driving a chariot or playing 
the flute, she undertook his Imperial duties, or continued 
to have that share in the ruling of the Empire which she 
had had under Claudius. She received embassies, was 
surrounded by a special German guard when she went 
abroad, and was associated with Nero on the coinage. It 
would be difficult to measure with any precision the in- 
fluence which she had on Roman affairs during this period, 
since Seneca and Burrus had an equal, if not greater, part 
in the government ; but it may be recalled, with some 
honour to her, that the first four years of Nero's reign were 
amongst the happiest and most prosperous that Rome 
witnessed during the first century. 

The first thing to trouble her prosperous and happy 
use of power was a certain discontent arising from the old 
prejudice against women in politics. The Senators were 
annoyed because she injudiciously hstened to their debates. 
They met at this time in the Imperial library, and the 
Empress had a door pierced into it from the palace, and 
sat listening behind a curtain. The Senators are said to 
have punished her indiscretion by making unflattering 
remarks in the course of the debates, though it is difficult 
to believe that they were still capable of so courageous a 
protest. On one occasion an important embassy came to 
Rome from Armenia, and Agrippina declared that she 
would sit by the side of Nero when he received it. This 
seems to have been a startling innovation, and Seneca had 
to avert trouble by advising Nero to descend from his 
throne, when his mother entered, and lead her affectionately 
from the room. 

An incident that shortly occurred gave a nucleus for the 
crystallization of this diffused anno3'ance. A distinguished 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 95 

noble, Junius Silanus, died, and the familiar whisper of 
foul play went once more through all classes of the citizens. 
His brother Lucius Silanus was the young noble who had 
been betrothed to Octavia, and had so cruelly been 
separated from her by Agrippina. Was it not natural 
that Junius Silanus should wish to avenge his younger 
brother, and that Agrippina should detect his plot and 
have him removed ? Tacitus and Dio fully beheved this. 
As in so many of these cases, however, the only ground 
for the charge, as far as we know, is the fact that Silanus 
undoubtedly died, and we will not waste time in discussing 
it. The Senator had so little of the conspirator in him 
that even Caligula used to call him " the golden sheep." 
But Rome was convinced that the Empress was guilty, and 
the story spread, and is fully accepted by Tacitus, that she 
meditated a long series of executions of the men who had 
opposed her progress, and that Seneca and Burrus had to 
restrain her bloody vindictiveness. 

One may decline to accept this charge on such poor 
and disputable evidence ; but Agrippina now incurred the 
anger of her son, and descended rapidly from the height 
of her power. The young Emperor had, as I said, used 
his Imperial license to ignore his tutors and indulge his 
low and sensual tastes. He attracted to his side a band of 
the most dissipated youths in the city, and his nightly 
exploits were the talk of Rome. One of the less hurtful 
of his indulgences was his passion for Acte, a beautiful 
freed slave from the Eastern market, whom Dumas has 
made familiar. Agrippina resented the liaison — apparently 
from a sense of justice to Octavia — and rebuked Nero. He 
turned on her with violence the moment she tried to check 
his licentious ways, and threatened to discharge her 
favourite Pallas. Agrippina was alarmed. She saw a 
powerful party, deeply hostile to herself, growing up about 
her son, and she felt that the support of Seneca and Burrus 
was being withdrawn. She ceased to speak of Acte, and 
regarded with silent distress the coarse ways that her son 
was exhibiting on the streets ever}' night. A reconciliation 



96 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

at this heavy price could not last. Shortly afterwards 
Nero sent her some rich jewels and robes from the Imperial 
treasures. She chose to regard this as a reminder that 
the Imperial wardrobe was no longer at her disposal, and 
angrily refused the gifts. 

Pallas was at once impeached for treason. The charge 
was so clumsy, and Seneca defended him so ably, that he 
had to be acquitted ; but Agrippina forgot discretion in 
her victory. In the course of a quarrel with Nero, she 
threatened to retire to the camp of the Praetorian Guard 
with Britannicus and have him proclaimed Emperor. The 
only effect of this was to open Nero's long career of crime. 
The few months — we are still at the beginning of the 
year 55 — of unrestrained license and flattery had destroyed 
the little moral restraint that Seneca had taught him, and 
he determined to murder Britannicus. In the Roman 
prison was the skilled poisoner, Locusta, whom Agrippina 
was believed to have employed in the murder of her 
husband. Nero ordered her to prepare a deadly poison, 
and, when the first preparation failed, he had her brought 
to the palace. With blows and oaths he forced her to 
prepare a more deadly drug under his eyes, and it was 
used the same evening. Britannicus sat with his friends 
on one of the couches in the dining-hall at the palace, and 
asked for a drink. It was winter-time, and the wine (not 
soup, as Serviez says) was heated. He complained that it 
was too hot, and the poison was administered with the 
cooling water, so that the taster would not need to take 
a second sip. 

A great horror fell upon the room as Britannicus, writh- 
ing with pain, sank to the floor. Octavia sat in silent terror 
by the side of her husband, who carelessly observed that 
Britannicus had one of his usual epileptic fits. Agrippina 
openly betrayed her horror and disgust, and from that date 
was regarded by her son with bitter hostility. Whether 
or no it be true that Nero whitened with chalk the spots 
which broke out on the body, the substance of the story 
cannot be discredited. It is true that Nero was yet in his 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 97 

eighteenth year only, but his conduct had been vicious and 
unbridled to a criminal extent. Within a very short time 
we shall find him sinking to the lowest depths of brutality. 
The fact that he is praised in the treatise " On Clemency," 
which Seneca wrote about that time, can only show either 
that the too indulgent tutor refused to believe the crime, or 
that, as we have too many reasons to know, the distinguished 
Stoic came perilously close to that art of casuistry in which 
moralists of many schools have been apt to excel. 

In her abhorrence of the foul deed Agrippina drew 
closer to the tender and virtuous Octavia, and confronted 
Nero with a sternness that had been too long delayed. 
The breach between them widened. One day Nero ordered 
that two and a half million denarii should be given to his 
favourite secretary. Agrippina had the mass of coin brought 
under the eyes of the Emperor, to make him realize his 
extravagance. He laughingly observed that he did not 
think the sum was so small, and ordered it to be doubled. 
The more lavishly he squandered, the more carefully 
Agrippina saved, until the frivolous or malicious companions 
of his revels suggested that she was gathering funds for the 
purpose of dethroning him. He at once withdrew the guard 
he had given her, and ordered her to leave his palace. 

Agrippina had enjoyed only for one year the power 
which she had sought so long. She was yet only in her 
fortieth year. The envoys of kings had sued humbly at 
her feet, and her litter and guard had flashed through the 
streets of Rome with an impression of greatness that no 
other woman then known had ever possessed. But the 
reins passed from her hands to her brutal son and his 
despicable courtiers. From the palace she passed, with a 
few devoted followers, to the small mansion of her grand- 
mother Antonia, and the sycophantic courtiers deserted 
her. Graver citizens, watching the rapid degradation of 
the Imperial house, followed her with sympathy, but few 
dared to visit her in the lonely mansion. Unfortunately, 
she quarrelled with one of these few, and came near to 
losing her life. 

7 



98 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Her old friend Julia Silana, a woman of great wealth 
but very faded beauty, proposed to marry a handsome 
young Roman knight. Agrippina imprudently advised 
him not to marry a woman of such advanced years and so 
adventurous a record. Her words were repeated to Julia, 
and friendship was exchanged for the most bitter animosity. 
Julia Silana was childless, and it is conjectured that Agrip- 
pina hoped to inherit her wealth if she died unmarried. 
Whether she believed this or no, Julia conceived a deep 
hatred, and induced two of her clients to accuse Agrippina 
of high treason. Nero seems to have been in an uncertain 
mood, and an ingenious plot was devised to win him. 

One night when he lay, flushed with wine, after the 
banquet, his favourite comedian Paris came to amuse him, 
Nero noticed that the man was agitated and less merry 
than usual, and asked the reason. Paris, who was acting 
in the service of the plotters, confessed with artistic tears 
that there was a conspiracy afoot to dethrone his noble 
master ; that Agrippina was about to marry Rubellius 
Plautus, a Senator of Imperial descent, and seize the throne. 
The inebriated Emperor at once demanded their heads, but 
Seneca and Burrus restrained him, and compelled him to 
hear Agrippina on the morrow. In her speech, which 
Tacitus has preserved, she refuted and routed her assailants 
with such vigour that she was, apparently, reconciled to 
Nero and restored to some authority. Julia Silana was 
banished, Domitia's chamberlain (who had instructed the 
actor) was executed, and Agrippina's own followers were 
rewarded. 

The two years that followed this reconciliation are 
obscure, and we can only dimly conjecture that Agrippina 
had some peace and prestige, but no longer shared the 
Imperial rule. Then, in the year 58, another and unexpected 
woman came into the field, and Agrippina sank rapidly 
toward an abyss of tragedy. 

In an earlier chapter we saw that Messalina drove to 
death a very wealthy and beautiful Roman lady named 
Poppsea Sabina. It was her daughter, who had inherited 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 99 

her wealth and her beauty, that now attracted the amorous 
regard of the Emperor. She had married one of Nero's 
favourite companions, who babbled in his cups of her 
dazzling beauty, and inflamed the desire of Nero. In the 
next chapter we shall read of her natural charms, of the 
singular art with which she cultivated them and the coquetry 
with which she employed them, and of the superb and 
fabulous splendour of her equipage. It is enough to sa}'^ 
here that Nero visited her, learned that she was willing to 
be an Empress, but not the mistress of an Emperor, and 
resolved to make any sacrifice to secure so unique a treasure. 
The first victim to be sacrificed to the new passion was 
Octavia, and the delicate and timid girl would make little 
resistance. But Agrippina had espoused her cause with 
a spirit that redeems much of her irregular conduct, and 
she now saw that her own interest, as well as that of 
Octavia, required that she should oppose Poppaea with all 
her strength. In that resolution she wrote her death- 
sentence, not ignobly. 

Even if we refuse to admit some of the incredible 
statements that are made regarding it in the chronicles, 
it is clear that an extraordinary struggle now took place 
about the person of the Emperor. The antagonists were 
Poppsea and Agrippina. Octavia was one of those frail, 
lily-Hke Roman women who never struggled ; Poppaea's 
husband was easily set aside. Poppaea affected coyness, 
and refused to have any other than conjugal relations 
with Nero, while she employed all her charms to inflame 
him. Agrippina fought so desperately that Roman gossip, 
and Roman historians, ascribed the most infamous devices 
to her. In spite of his expression of doubt, it is plain 
that Tacitus shares the popular belief, which he relates, 
that Agrippina used to sit with her son in loose robes 
when he was heated with wine, and to ride in the same 
litter with him. Against this charge, however, Dio defends 
her (Ixi, 11). He says that one of Nero's courtesans 
resembled his mother, and that a light remark of his on 
that circumstance gave birth to the libel. Poppsea would 



loo THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

not be indisposed to encourage the story. On the other 
hand, Mr. Baring-Gould attempts an untenable defence 
when he speaks of Agrippina as " the poor old lady." 
She was only in her forty-second year, and was a woman 
of great beauty and little scruple. 

Whatever arts Agrippina employed in the struggle, 
she rapidly lost ground before so formidable a rival, and 
Poppaea incited Nero against her. He harassed her with 
lawsuits when she was in Rome, and sent men to insult 
her when she withdrew to her villa in the country. Before 
long Agrippina became sensible that her struggle for power 
had passed into the appalling experience of a struggle for 
life against her own son. Nero made several attempts to 
poison her, but she was on her guard against this familiar 
weapon. It is said that she had an antidote compounded 
of walnuts, figs, rue, and salt. Then a freedman in Nero's 
suite suggested a more insidious scheme. Her country 
house was in repair, and Anicetus directed the workmen 
to saw through the heavy timber over her bed, so that 
the room would collapse when she went to rest. Agrippina 
was warned, however, and the plot was defeated. 

By the early spring of the year 59 Nero had fallen into 
a mood of the most sombre and bitter dejection. Poppaea 
continued to taunt him with his dependence on his mother, 
and to display her maddening charms just beyond the 
range of his eager arms. The better citizens of Rome, 
on the other hand, now perceived his horrible design, 
and watched the struggle with anxiety. As he sat at 
the theatre one day in this mood, his attention was caught 
by one of the elaborate mechanical spectacles which were 
often put on the stage at the time. A ship sailed into 
view of the spectators, fell into pieces, and disgorged a 
number of wild beasts upon the stage, Nero asked 
Anicetus, who was a skilful mechanic, whether he could 
build a ship that would thus fall to pieces on the water 
at a given moment. The man promised to do so, and Nero 
went down to the coast in more cheerful temper. 

It was the month of March, when wealth}^ Romans 



THE MOTHER OF NERO loi 

were wont to forsake the city for the marble villas 
which shone in the spring sun on the flowered hills about 
the northern corner of the Bay of Naples. The season 
began with the festival of Minerva on March 19th. With 
some surprise and suspicion, Agrippina, who had gone 
down to her villa, received an affectionate invitation to 
join her son at Baiae for the celebration ; and she heard 
from other quarters that he had announced a desire to 
be reconciled with her. She went on board the Liburnian 
galley which lay off the gardens of her villa at Antium, 
and sailed to Baiae. Nero met her in the Imperial galley, 
kissed her affectionately, and invited her to a banquet 
which his friend Otho, the husband of Poppaea, would 
give that night in honour of their reconciliation. She 
consented, but it is clear that she wavered between her 
consciousness of the utter unscrupulousness of her son 
and the bright vision of a return to happiness which he 
held before her. 

When the hour came for going, she was told that her 
galley had met with an accident, but that a superb gilded 
galley, with sails of silk and a military guard on board, had 
been sent as a love-gift from her son in commemoration of 
their restored affection. She gazed with suspicion on the 
beautiful object, as it lay mirrored in the waters of the little 
haven, and decided to go overland, on a litter, to Otho's 
villa. But the amiable behaviour of Nero at the banquet 
dispelled the last shade of her suspicion. In the joy which 
his caresses and his well-feigned affection gave her, she 
did not notice the passing of the hours until midnight, 
when she rose to go. The beautiful ship with the gilded 
flanks and the silken sails awaited her once more, and this 
time she embarked on it. Nero kissed her eyes and her 
hands, put his arms about her and pressed her to his 
bosom, held her while he gave a last long look into her 
eyes, and then — abandoned her to the murderer Anicetus. 

The galley shot out over the smooth scented waters 
under a canopy of brilliant stars. Agrippina sat in her 
cabin, in the soft spring air, and talked about the happy 



I02 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

future with her one male attendant, Crepereius Gallus, and 
her one maid, Acerronia Pollia. And suddenly, as they 
reached the deep water, there was an ugly crack, and the 
roof of the cabin fell on them. Gallus was killed outright, 
but the two women were saved, as the stout walls failed to 
collapse, and there was some misunderstanding among the 
crew in the dark. The maid rushed to the deck calling for 
aid for the Empress — others say that she represented her- 
self as the Empress — and was slain. Agrippina listened 
with terror to the crash of timber and the rush of armed 
men, and realized the treachery of her son. Still she did 
not court death. She dropped quietly over the side, and 
swam toward the distant shore. Her strength gradually 
failed, and she was about to abandon the awful struggle, 
when some men who were fishing by night picked her up 
and took her ashore. 

Wounded by the falling timbers, exhausted by the 

struggle, stricken to the heart by the brutality of her son, 

she nevertheless rallied at once, and devised a fresh plan. 

She calmly sent a message to Nero that, by the favour of 

the gods, she had survived the wreck of the galley which 

he had given her, but requested that he would not come to 

visit her until her wound was healed. Without a word to 

her attendants about the horrible plot, she ordered the 

remedies for her condition, and trusted that Nero would 

repent. Through the remaining hours of the night she lay 

on her couch, with one maid in attendance, her room feebly 

lit by a single light. The whole country without was alive 

with men. The shore was lit up with their torches, and 

they gathered about the house to express their joy that 

Agrippina had escaped shipwreck on the very night of so 

auspicious a reconciliation. As the first light of dawn 

broke on the encircling hills, Anicetus and his men entered 

the house with Nero's reply. She read something of its 

tenor in their faces, and said to their leader : " Hast thou 

come to visit me ? Then tell my son that I have recovered. 

Hast thou come to slay me? Then I say it is not my son 

who sent thee." A sailor struck her over the head with a 



THE MOTHER OF NERO 103 

stick, and she saw that the end had come. Tearing aside 
her loose robe, and baring her white body to the men, she 
said sadly : ** Strike here, Anicetus, for it was here that 
Nero was born." She fell dead under a shower of blows. 

Nero had heard that his mother had escaped. Dreading 
that she might stir into flame the resentment of Rome, he 
called a council of his friends. Seneca is said to have been 
silent, Burrus indignant. At that moment Agrippina's 
chamberlain entered with her message. In a flash of 
cunning Anicetus threw a sword at his feet, and pretended 
that he had been sent by Agrippina to kill Nero. The 
Emperor accepted the sordid pretext, and, as Burrus 
bluntly refused to send his soldiers to execute her, Anicetus 
gladly charged himself with the task. He was appointed 
admiral of one of the fleets for his services. It is even 
recorded, though details like this must always be regarded 
with reserve, that when the servants bore their mistress's 
body to the garden, and stripped it for the pile, Nero stood 
by and said, jeeringly : "I had no idea she was so hand- 
some." 

A report was issued, and a formal announcement made 
to the Senate, that Agrippina had attempted the Emperor's 
life, and that, when Nero sent men to arrest her, she took 
her own life. And the Senate licked the feet of Nero, 
decreed games and festivals in gratitude for his preserva- 
tion, and led the enthusiasm of the people. So well known 
was the murder that an actor referred mockingly to it in 
the theatre. " Farewell, my father," he said, eating a mush- 
room—" Farewell, mother," he added, imitating the action 
of a swimmer. The common folk repeated numbers of 
these grim jokes. But they enjoyed the games of thanks- 
giving, and Senators and nobles took part in them on the 
stage and in the arena, and Rome sank swiftly into the 
terrible degradation of Nero's later reign, which will 
occupy us in the next chapter. 

It is hardly necessary to add a summary estimate of 
Agrippina's character. In the view of Stahr and Baring- 
Gould and a few other recent writers, she was " queenly, 



I04 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

honourable, and pure," and had only the doubtful vices 
of ambition and pride. For Tacitus and the other Latin 
writers she was capable of any enormity, and guilty of 
most. It will be seen that I hold an intermediate view. 
She was a woman of great distinction, ability, and strength. 
Had she lived in an age when virtue was not inexpedient, 
she would have been an illustrious and virtuous queen. 
But she had to struggle to obtain and retain power in an 
age when a new and more intellectual moral standard was 
replacing an older and more instinctive standard, and, 
where it seemed profitable, she availed herself of the moral 
scepticism which such a change always engenders. She 
was queenly, but she was not entirely honourable, and she 
was almost certainly not pure. But she served Rome well, 
and left it happy and prosperous ; and her unselfish passion 
for the advancement of her son, her chivalrous and fatal 
defence of his injured wife, and the bravery with which 
she met his unspeakable brutality, do much to outweigh 
her evil deeds in the scale of Osiris. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WIVES OF NERO 

NERO was no longer " the young Apollo " of his boy- 
hood. Unbridled dissipation and precocious crime 
had made their impress on body no less than on 
mind. He was a little above the average height, but his 
prematurely swollen paunch was poorly balanced on his 
slender and ungraceful limbs, and his skin was blotched 
and repellent. The dull grey eyes betrayed his unceasing 
indulgence, and the yellow hair, dressed in stages of short 
curls, framed a face that was certainly no longer handsome. 
His mind was in unmistakable disorder. Our kindly age 
would invoke this mental trouble in extenuation of the 
brutal crimes he had committed and the stupendous folly 
he is about to perpetrate. Were this a biography of the 
Emperors, we might boldly essay to prove rather that the 
insanity followed the matricide, but that does not concern 
us. He was, as yet, only in his twenty-second year. 

To this precocious monstrosity of vice and crime was 
mated one of the gentlest young matrons of the Caesarean 
house, Octavia, the daughter of Claudius and Messalina. 
Married at the very early age of thirteen to Nero, her 
timid girlish nature was paralyzed by the coarse habits of 
her husband, and she merely hovers about the stage, like a 
dimly perceptible shadow, during the earlier part of Nero's 
reign. It must have been shortly after their marriage that 
Nero disdained her for the beautiful Greek slave, Acte, to 
whom he was more constant than to any other living thing, 
and who, in return, paid the last tribute to his despised 

105 



io6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

remains. At first one of Nero's associates screened the en- 
tanglement, but, as we saw, it became known in the palace, 
and Agrippina made a fruitless effort to press the rights 
of his girl-wife. The injustice was, however, one that 
Roman ladies were not unaccustomed to bear. Nero soon 
fell into more disreputable ways, Octavia would see him 
leave the palace after supper with his wild companions, 
and needed little effort of imagination to follow his course 
when he returned, in the early morning, with torn gar- 
ments and flushed, if not bruised, features and, occasionally, 
the painted signs that he had wrenched from shop-doors, 
or the cups he had stolen in a raid upon some low tavern. 

He had gathered about him a band of older youths, who 
encouraged him in the licentious use of his power, and 
endeared themselves to him by the fertility of their imagina- 
tions. Chief among them was Salvius Otho, a young noble 
of Etruscan descent, five years older than Nero — the 
Emperor Otho of a later date. He had entered the palace 
in virtue of an amorous relation with one of Agrippina's 
ladies, and his wide knowledge of adolescent amusements 
won him the regard of Nero, whom he led into the wildest 
adventures. They would wander at night through the 
streets, and revel in the taverns and brothels of the popular 
quarters of the city, the mysterious dim-lit valleys on 
which patrician maidens looked down from the mansions 
on the hills. In those centres of nightly disorder Nero 
and his companions were the most daring Mohocks, if we 
may use a phrase that belongs to later history. They 
violated women and boys, and played the most brutal 
pranks upon unarmed folk. One night Nero was severely 
thrashed by a Senator, whose wife he had insulted. The 
man learned afterwards that it was the Emperor whom he 
had beaten, and went to the palace to apologize. Nero 
forced him to atone with his life for the injury he had done 
to the Imperial dignity. He withdrew the guards from the 
Circus, in order that he might enjoy the fights of the rival 
factions, and from the Milvian Bridge, at night, so as to 
give complete liberty to vice in that nocturnal resort, 



THE WIVES OF NERO 107 

The chaste and trembling Octavia, who was still only 
in her sixteenth year, shrank from his brutal disdain. It 
was enough for her to have the title of Empress, he said 
to his mother, when she urged the rights of Octavia. 
Presently Nero declared that he would divorce her, and 
marry the handsome Greek girl, but Seneca and Burrus 
succeeded in preventing him. To check his disorders 
entirely they were quite powerless, and they seem to 
have thought it better to direct, than to resist, his 
vices. Suddenly, however, in the year 58, Nero trans- 
ferred his passion to the daughter of Poppsea Sabina, 
and began the long, tragic struggle to secure her as his 
Empress. 

Poppaea, who will be the next figure in our gallery 
of Roman Empresses, and therefore may at once be 
introduced, was one of the prettiest, vainest, and most 
discussed ladies in Rome. Her mother, with whom we 
are already acquainted as one of Messalina's victims, had 
been the daughter of a very wealthy and illustrious 
provincial governor, Poppaeus Sabinus. Poppaea's father, 
Titus Ollius, had been a friend of Sejanus, and had been 
swept away in the flood of Tiberius's anger. She was, 
therefore, of mature years, but she had protected her 
charms so industriously that she still had the soft beauty 
and the fresh complexion of a girl. She had inherited 
also the wealth, the wit, and — it is said — the easy morals 
of her mother. The pretence of modesty which she made, 
by wearing a veil whenever she went abroad, was redeemed 
by the splendour of her establishment and the elaborate 
culture of her fair skin and pretty face. The mules which 
drew the litter of the veiled lady were shod with gold, 
and the traces of their harness were woven from gold 
thread. When she moved to her country house, or to 
Baiae, five hundred she-asses ran in the train of her 
litter and cars, to provide the milk for her daily bath. If 
we may trust the busts to which her name is attached, 
she had a childish grace and delicacy of feature, instead 
of the tense face of the adventuress ; and we know that 



io8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

her amber-coloured hair was so much admired that it set, 
or revived, a fashion in amber. 

She had married a knight, Rufus Crispinus, by whom 
she had had a son. This marriage was ended by divorce, 
and she became the wife of Nero's favourite, Salvius Otho. 
It is suggested, and not difficult to believe, that she had 
married Otho on account of his intimacy with the Emperor. 
He was by no means handsome, though he covered his 
baldness with a wig, dressed sumptuously, and had wealth, 
wit, and taste for art. From him Nero heard, over their 
cups, the piquant story of Poppaea's beauty and luxury, 
and it was not long before Imperial messengers were sent 
to her mansion. They were not admitted, and even Nero, 
when he sought entrance, was coyly reminded that Poppaea 
was married, and was devoted to her husband. After a 
stormy siege she gracefully capitulated so far as to receive 
innocent visits from Nero, and inflame him to madness 
with the display of her cultivated beauty. He spoke 
bitterly of his mother as an obstacle in the way of their 
marriage. Poppaea twitted him with his dependence on 
her, and we have seen the outcome. 

When Agrippina had been removed, Nero proposed 
at once to divorce Octavia and wed Poppaea. The silence 
of Seneca at all these critical points in the degradation 
of Nero is painful to every admirer of the distinguished 
moralist. It was the less courtly and less virtuous Burrus 
who defended the young Empress, If Nero abandoned 
Octavia, he brusquely said, he must also give up her 
dowry— the throne — and Burrus was too generally respected 
to be flouted. Octavia therefore remained in her lonely 
chamber at the palace, a helpless witness of the vices of 
her husband. 

For a month or two after the murder of Agrippina he 
behaved as one stricken with a wild and haunting remorse. 
He went feverishly from place to place, and gathered about 
him a band of magicians and charlatans. He feared to go 
to Rome until he was assured that Rome was rejoicing 
at his escape from his mother's plot. Few pages in the 



THE WIVES OF NERO 109 

story of that degenerate city are sadder than that which 
records the reception, in the month of May, of the Imperial 
matricide. The Senators and their families, dressed in their 
gayest robes, hurried out along the Appian Way to meet 
him, and his route was lined deep with cheering crowds. 
He rewarded them royally. Five or six theatres opened 
their doors, day after day, to the degraded citizens. New 
things — things that had never before been seen in the 
whole history of the city — were provided for their enter- 
tainment. Men and women of the highest rank played 
the most lascivious parts of the mimes on the public 
stage, and drove their chariots in the public circus. Nero 
was a champion of the "green" faction, and pitted his 
royal skill daily in the circus against the charioteers of 
the other factions. He sang in the theatre, and organized 
a band of five thousand handsome youths, in splendid 
costumes, to lead the applause, and shower upon him his 
favourite epithet of "Apollo." He even ventured to win 
praise in the amphitheatre, but the one young lion which 
he vanquished had been prudently gorged and stupefied 
before he encountered it. He announced that his skill 
might be hired for private banquets, and nobles paid him 
a million sesterces for his services. Apollo, he reflected, 
had no beard in Greek statuary, so he shaved his beard, 
and the handful of yellow hair was enclosed in a golden 
casket studded with pearls, and carried in solemn pro- 
cession to the Capitol. In the mighty rejoicing over this 
complete assimilation to Apollo of the tun-bellied, lanky- 
legged, half-crazy youth, it is recorded that a noble dame 
in her eightieth year danced on the stage in the theatre. 
The descendants of the greatest Roman families volun- 
tarily entered the base ranks of the comedian and the 
charioteer. 

Mr. Henderson is reluctant to admit, in his study of 
Nero, that he was insane. It would, no doubt, puzzle the 
most penetrating psychologist to assign the respective 
portions of guilt and of irresponsible disorder in his 
conduct ; but that there was mental disorder it is at once 



no THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

more natural and more charitable to assume. In any case, 
a year or so of this delirious life wore out his robust 
frame, and a serious illness suspended for a time the 
disgraceful performances. Unfortunately, when he re- 
covered, he lost the one man who had had some power to 
restrain him, and sufficient honesty to use it. Burrus died 
in the year 62, and at the same time the slender influence 
of Seneca was destroyed. This is no place to discuss the 
difficult and delicate problem of Seneca's conduct in his 
association with Nero. Enough to say that he was now 
accused of conspiracy, and, although he successfully 
defended himself, he ceased to have any power at the 
palace. 

It was now possible for Nero to rid himself of the pale 
young prude, who shrank in her apartments, and there were 
men enough to devise the procedure. Salvius Otho had 
already been sent to a remote part of the Empire, and his 
place had been taken by a horse-dealer, named Tigellinus, 
of little culture and even less character. With this new 
favourite Poppaea entered into alliance, and the young 
Empress presently found herself accused, with brutal 
levity, of adultery with Eucer, an Alexandrian slave and 
musician, and of covering her shame by the crime of 
abortion. Tigellinus easily obtained witnesses, but most 
of Octavia's servants refused, even under torture, to belie 
the virtue of their gentle mistress. The coarseness of 
Tigellinus had carried him too far, and public feeling was 
strongly aroused in her favour. Nero fell back upon the 
ground of her childlessness, of which he could probably 
have furnished a simple explanation, and divorced her. In 
deference to the sentiment of Rome, he at first gave her the 
house of Burrus and the fortune of a noble whom he had 
executed. A little later, however, probably under pressure 
from Poppsea, he banished her to Campania. He had 
married Poppsea a fortnight after the divorce of Octavia. 

But the flagrant outrage quickened the better feeling 
that Rome had not yet entirely lost, and Nero was forced 
to recall her. To the deep mortification of Poppaea, the 



THE WIVES OF NERO in 

crowds invaded the outer court of the palace, crying the 
name of Octavia. They removed the statues of the new 
Empress from the temples and public places, and restored 
to their positions, and crowned with flowers, the discarded 
statues of Octavia. Poppaea angrily pressed Nero to assert 
his power, and the resourceful Anicetus, the murderer of 
Agrippina, was summoned to Rome. Bolder even than 
Tigellinus, he swore that he himself had had commerce 
with Octavia, and, after a pretence of trial, she was banished 
to Sardinia. Poppaea was not yet content, and Nero next 
announced that Octavia had been detected in an attempt 
to corrupt the commander of the fleet. She was taken to 
the rock-island of Pandateria that had already witnessed 
tragedies. 

The good feeling of Rome seems by this time to have 
been exhausted, and Octavia was lazily surrendered to 
the brutal band who now surrounded Nero. There is 
a peculiar melancholy in the closing of that frail and 
innocent career. Rough soldiers seize the timid form, 
carry her to the bath, bind her limbs, and open her veins. 
Timid and shrinking to the end, the young girl — even now 
she is only in her twentieth year — starts back with horror 
from the great darkness, and piteously implores them to 
spare her life. She faints, and the flow of her blood is 
arrested. The last pretence of pity is tossed aside, and she 
is stifled in the vapour-bath. 

Poppaea, Tacitus says, sent for her head. It is difficult 
to decide whether the frequent repetition of this horrible 
detail in the chronicles increases or lessens its credulity. 
But we can have no hesitation in believing Tacitus when 
he says that the Senate ordered services of thanksgiving 
in the temples for this fresh preservation of the life of the 
Emperor. 

Another Empress had stepped in blood to the throne, 
and was in turn to stain it with her blood after a few years 
of imperial folly. We have seen what type of woman it 
was whom Nero put in the place of Octavia. Wealthy, 
coquettish, and beautiful, Poppaea saw in life only a sunny 



112 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

path for the pursuit of butterflies. When she is represented 
to us as licentious we must remember that no definite 
scandal attaches to her name, and that she is actually 
described as " pious " by no less an authority than the 
Jewish historian Josephus. In fact this circumstance, and 
a peculiar feature of the disposal of her body, which we 
will consider, gave birth to a speculation in early times 
that she had become a Christian. Serviez finds the story 
of her conversion by St. Paul, and subsequent " return to 
her abominations," too piquant to admit of doubt. But the 
conversion is even more disputable than the abominations. 
It is now much disputed among our leading divines 
whether St. Paul ever visited Rome, and there is a 
simpler explanation of the phrase used by Josephus. The 
Roman governor of Judaea — the biblical Felix, a brother of 
Agrippina's favourite, Pallas — had dealt harshly with the 
Jews, and sent some of their priests in chains to Rome. 
Josephus and others went to intercede for them, and luckily 
met a Jewish comedian who was in the favour of Poppsea 
and Nero. The historian was received with distinction at 
the palace, and was so successful in his suit that he might 
well ascribe piety to Poppaea. We may agree that the 
incident probably argues some culture on her part. But 
we shall discover her later in conduct that makes it un- 
desirable to count her as a disciple of St. Paul. 

Before the end of the year Poppaea presented Nero with 
a daughter, and a few weeks of wild rejoicing restored her 
to general favour, and obliterated the memory of Octavia. 
The title of "Augusta" was, in an excess of flattery, 
bestowed upon both the mother and the infant. Senators 
raced each other to the Imperial villa at Antium, to express 
their joy at this substantial promise of a continuance of 
the Caesarean house which had dragged them in the mire. 
The whole of Italy was lit up with rejoicing. Poppaea felt 
that her position was at last secure. And then, by one 
of those dread changes which were almost as common in 
the life of Rome as in the tragedies of Greece, and made 
men assume that there was a stern and mighty fate behind 




OCTAVIA 

PORPHYRY BUST IN THE LOUVRE 



THE WIVES OF NERO 113 

their puny and indulgent gods, the storm broke over Italy 
once more. The child withered and died, and Nero's mind 
fell once more into dark disorder. He glanced round with 
insane suspicion for possible aspirants to the throne, and 
Poppaea's remaining son was the first victim. One day 
he saw her bo}^ (by her former husband) playing at being 
emperor in his games with the other children. In a few 
days Poppaea heard that the boy had lost his life while 
fishing. Many another execution was ordered with the 
same levity. 

As before, these terrible deeds were mingled with the 
most splendid and the most licentious entertainments. 
Noble dames of the highest rank wrestled and fought in 
the amphitheatre before the frivolous crowds ; the city 
abounded in schools where the nobility learned to ape the 
Emperor's folly, and contribute to the gaiety of Rome with 
the flute, the zither, or the dance. Nero conceived a new 
idea, and pursued it with zeal. He would contest the 
crown with the artists of Greece. Poppsea saw him train- 
ing in the palace, lying for hours with heavy plates of lead 
on his chest, restricting himself to a diet of leeks and oil. 
She saw him exhibit his skill in the theatre, lifting up his 
blotched and swollen body, in extraordinary contortions, 
on his thin legs, as he strained after the high notes. Woe 
to the man who openly laughed, or who excelled him ! 
One of his masters was put to death because Nero per- 
ceived that he could not equal the man. At last his 
training was complete, and Rome sighed with relief as the 
thousand carts, drawn by silver-shod mules, and the five 
thousand youths of the Augustan band, set out for the 
coast. They gratified Naples with a show as they passed 
through. For several days Nero kept the amazed citizens 
in the theatre, and took his meals in the orchestra, so as 
to lose no time. Then came the inevitable epilepsy ; and 
it was announced that Nero, perceiving the grief of his 
subjects at the prospect of his departure, had postponed 
the Grecian tour. 

On his return to comparative health, and to Rome, he 



il4 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

once more kept the citizens agog with alternate bursts of 

frantic dissipation and sanguinary melancholy. From the 

death of her child until her own violent end, two years 

later, Poppaea appears very little in the chronicles ; but, 

as we shall see that, willing or unwilling, she supported 

her husband in his bloody crimes, we may assume that 

she joined him in his less criminal orgies. One instance 

will suffice. He ordered that a banquet should be given 

on a raft, on the large sheet of water known as Lake 

Agrippa. When the citizens crowded to the shore on the 

appointed evening, they found the great raft towed by 

vessels plated with ivory and gold, manned by youths 

who had won distinction in infamy. Round the shore 

taverns, brothels, and dining-rooms had been erected. 

And when the night fell, and the beautiful scene was lit 

by the light of innumerable torches, the public found that 

women of the highest rank were no less accessible to them 

than prostitutes in the houses by the lake, and the slave 

was at liberty to embrace his mistress under the eye of 

her husband. Nero even outdistanced Caligula in the 

Imperial teaching of vice. In the garb of a bride, he went 

through the religious ceremony of marriage with a man of 

base character, named Pythagoras. He had nude children 

fastened to stakes, and rushed upon them fittingly clad 

in the skin of a wild beast. And round the frontiers of 

that vast Empire, which the strength and sobriety of his 

ancestors had created, the weary soldiers watched the 

barbarians who prepared to invade it. 

It was about this time that the great fire occurred 
which turned the laughter of Nero's subjects into resent- 
ment. For six days and seven nights the flames ate their 
way through the blocks of tall tenements, divided only 
by narrow streets, in the parching heat of July. Nero was 
in the provinces at the time, and from the conflicting 
accounts it is impossible to pass an opinion on the rumour 
that he had ordered the burning of Rome. Dio gives us 
the familiar picture of Nero twanging his zither, and 
chanting the "Fall of Troy" from the summit of a high 



THE WIVES OF NERO 115 

tower on the hill. Others declare, however, that he at 
once ordered the most expedient methods for checking the 
conflagration. But it was angrily whispered among the 
camps of the homeless that men had been seen throwing 
torches upon their houses, and that they were acting under 
orders from the palace. Nor were the citizens appeased 
when he threw the blame on the obscure and unpopular 
devotees who went by the name of Christians, and afforded 
them the brutal spectacle of driving round the circus to 
the light of burning men and women, whose living bodies 
had been wrapped in tow and soaked in wax and tar. Few 
believed in their guilt. Even Seneca at length broke his 
casuistic or diplomatic reserve, and retired in disgust from 
Rome. Nero went down in great dejection to Baiae, 
leaving orders that, in the restoration of the city, a new 
palace should be built for him that should transcend 
anything within the memory of Rome or of history. 

This "golden house," which Nero raised round the 
more modest palaces of his predecessors, gave a fresh 
grievance to discontent. The great and unselfish Octavian 
had been satisfied with a small patrician mansion ; Tiberius 
had built a palace ; Caligula had enlarged it ; Nero flung 
out its wings over a vast space. It seemed that Emperors 
squandered the money of the State in proportion to their 
uselessness. The colossal edifice and its wonderful park 
stretched from the Palatine to the Esquiline, across the 
intervening valley, and was surrounded by a triple colon- 
nade in marble. Citizens huddled in the crowded blocks 
of the Subura and the Velabrum, while Nero created a 
miniature world within his marble girdle. There was a 
great lake, filled with salt water from Ostia, with a small 
■town on its shore ; there were vineyards, cornfields, groves 
in which wild beasts ran loose, fountains, and gardens. 
The palace itself was of such proportions that a statue 
of Nero one hundred and twenty feet high could be 
conveniently lodged in its porch. Some of the rooms were 
plated with gold and adorned with precious stones. The 
supper-room had a ceiling of ivory, with openings through 



ii6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

which flowers and costly perfumes might be shed upon 
the guests. The Egyptian roses whose beauty withered 
in one banquet in this chamber had a value of ;^35,ooo 
in our coinage. 

There now dawned on Rome some consciousness of the 
price that the Empire was paying for the stupendous folly 
it had so long applauded. While the treasury was being 
exhausted in entertainments that all could enjoy, the 
murmuring was confined to the sober few. From the 
moment when this colossal symbol of Nero's selfishness 
towered above the city, the murmurs became audible and 
were multiplied. Nero, alarmed at the sullen looks and 
the vague reports of plots, went down angrily to the coast. 
Then a slave brought a definite accusation of conspiracy 
against his master, and the stream of blood began to flow. 

It is an unhappy fact, and one that confirms the darker 
view of Poppsea's character, that almost the only detail 
related of her in the chronicles, after the death of her 
child, is that she was one of the council of three who 
directed this horrible series of executions. Nero would 
not trust the ordinary procedure of Roman justice. With 
Poppsea and Tigellinus as associate-judges, he himself 
examined, or endorsed, every charge that cupidity or 
malignity brought to the palace. Rome was reddened 
for weeks with torture, murder, and suicide. Students of 
the decay of Rome have, perhaps, not sufficiently appre- 
ciated the effect of this periodic eff'usion of the best blood 
in the city. In the earlier wars, both civil and foreign, 
the good and the base alike had fallen. In these inquisitions 
for conspiracy, which fill Rome with mourning time after 
time from the death of Octavian to the accession of Trajan, 
it is chiefly the men and women of honour who suffer. 
They constitute a natural selection of the cowardly and 
the sycophantic. 

The city " teemed with funerals," in the terse phrase 
of Tacitus, and the gatherings of its citizens were black 
with mourning. Large numbers of officers and patricians 
were executed or driven to suicide, and their children were 



THE WIVES OF NERO 117 

scourged or banished to the provinces. Seneca paid the 
penalty of his tardy outspokenness, and his admirable end 
sustains our trust that his character may, in spite of our 
unconquerable hesitations, have been not inconsistent with 
his high creed. He and his wife, who nobly asked per- 
mission to quit the world with him, had their veins opened, 
and Seneca passed into the silence with quiet dignity ; 
his wife was, to her regret, recalled to life by the soldiers. 

Poppaea did not live to share the punishment which 
these crimes brought upon Nero. Her end came more 
swiftly and in more terrible form. The carnage had been 
interrupted by a fresh outburst of rejoicing. A man 
declared to Nero that he knew where the fabulous treasures 
of the Carthaginian queen Dido, which Vergil had so 
recently sung in the " iEneid," were buried. A fleet was 
sent to Africa to recover them, and from his sombre 
brooding Nero passed into a new fit of prodigal enter- 
taining. He emptied the last depths of his treasury in 
spectacles and donations. When the fleet returned at 
length without a single cup or coin, his anger stormed 
with ungovernable fury, and one day, when Poppaea ex- 
postulated with him, he kicked her in the abdomen. The 
outrage proved fatal, as she was pregnant, and Nero's 
light mind turned from rage to the most extravagant 
lamentation. Her body was not burned, as was usual 
at Rome, but embalmed, and vast quantities of rare per- 
fumes were sacrificed on the funeral pile. This peculiarity 
of her funeral has been thought to strengthen the interest- 
ing legend of her conversion to Christianity. It was more 
probably due to Nero's frenzied desire to give a unique 
burial to so unique a goddess, as the Senate declared 
her to be. It is unthinkable that Nero should make such 
a concession to Christian ideas, even if she had shared 
them in any measure, and her life does not dispose us to 
claim that honour for her. The legend has no foundation 
in history, and the early Church may easily be relieved 
of the stain of having counted Poppaea among its adherents. 

It is not our place to pursue the insanity of the Em- 



ii8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

peror through all the forms it assumed after the death of 
Poppsea, but he took a third wife, whom Mr. Baring-Gould 
seems to have overlooked, and we must briefly relate the 
story of her experience. Immediately after the death of 
Poppaea Nero took a consort whom the pen almost shrinks 
from describing. It seemed to him that he discovered a 
resemblance to his beloved Poppaea in one of his freedmen, 
Sporus. The man was entrusted to the surgeons for a loath- 
some operation, and then solemnly married to the Emperor. 
Dressed in the Empress's robes and jewels, he travelled in 
Nero's litter, and was publicly kissed and caressed by 
him. 

This abominable comedy soon lost its interest, and 
Nero decided to marry Octavia's sister, Antonia. Recollect- 
ing the recent fate of her sister, she boldly refused, and she 
was put to death on a charge of aspiring to the throne. 
Nero then chose Statilia Messalina, the granddaughter of 
a distinguished and wealthy Senator who had been driven 
to take his own life under Agrippina. The last part of the 
" Annals " of Tacitus, which would cover this date, is miss- 
ing, and if we are to believe the less reputable chroniclers, 
Messalina had already?- been familiar with Nero, and had 
married, as her third husband, one of his close companions 
in debauch, Atticus Vestinus. She is described as beauti- 
ful, witty, wealthy, and lax ; but the description is applied 
to so large a proportion of the ladies of the time that 
it gives little aid to the imagination. From some later 
details we shall conclude that she had more culture, and 
probably more character, than most of the courtly ladies of 
Nero's time. One is disposed to think that she married 
Nero on the maxim, literally interpreted, that it is better to 
be married than burned. Her husband was one night 
entertaining his friends when soldiers from the palace 
entered the room. They took him to his bath, opened his 
veins, and let him bleed to death ; and Statiha Messalina 
became the tenth Empress of Rome. 

There is every reason to believe that she shrank, with 
prudence, from the executions and entertainments which 




POPPtEA 

bust in the capitoline museum, rome 



THE WIVES OF NERO 119 

again proceeded with ghastly alternation. Her five pre- 
decessors had been murdered ; the preceding lady of Nero's 
choice had been murdered ; and she had herself been 
divorced by murder. Messalina seems to have concentrated 
her resources upon remaining alive, until a last and most 
just murder should release her from her odious connexion. 
Men were wearying even of Nero's ridiculous performances, 
and were stung by his cruelty. He put soldiers amongst 
his audience, to note the absent and detect the scoffer, so 
that his festivals became an affliction. Men were driven to 
the subterfuge of shamming death, and being borne out by 
their slaves, to avoid the exacting part of admiring 
spectators. Nero swore that he would exterminate the 
whole senatorial order ; it is the most honourable mention 
we find of them in the chronicles for many decades. To 
their relief he now announced that he would proceed with 
his Greek tour. The silver-shod mules and the gay regi- 
ment of the Augustans were set in motion, Nero's hair was 
permitted to attain an artistic length and negligence, and 
the comedy was transferred for a time to the land of 
Aristophanes. How he won every prize for which he 
competed, how he plundered the temples and the mansions 
of the Greeks, how his retinue passed like a flight of 
locusts over the helpless province, must be read elsewhere. 
After some eighteen months he was recalled to Italy by 
grave tidings. 

It has been impossible to refrain from speaking in 
accents of disdain of the way in which Rome had silently 
witnessed, or joyously acclaimed, the successive follies of 
Nero, but, as I have previously noticed, it was in a 
peculiarly difficult situation. The Praetorian Guards were 
an army of twenty thousand disciplined soldiers, and were 
paid for personal service to the ruling house, and blind to 
any other interest than their own. They kept an irresistible 
check upon every impulse to rebel. That there were such 
impulses, and probably some attempt to seduce the Guards, 
the unfailing stream of blood at Rome justifies us in believ- 
ing. The hope of the Empire was in the more sober and 



I20 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

more industrious provinces, and it was here that the revolt 
began. The leader of the troops in Gaul, Vindex, entered 
into correspondence with the troops in Spain. The 
Spanish commander, Servius Sulpicius Galba, was a 
Roman of illustrious family, venerable age, and stern 
character. Nero had heard that the purple had been 
offered to Galba, and that the legions of Gaul and Spain 
were preparing to advance on Italy. 

On his return to Italy, however, Nero hears that the 
German legions are advancing against those of Gaul, and 
that Galba is hesitating. He gaily resumes his follies, 
and is deaf to political exhortations. At last a manifesto 
is put into his hands, in which Vindex refers to him as a 
"miserable player," and the insult to his art cuts deeply. 
He writes to the Senate to demand redress, and sets out 
for Rome. Nothing in the whole of his extraordinary 
career is so tragi-comic as this penultimate scene. Clothed 
in a mantle of purple embroidered with gold stars, wearing 
the Olympian chaplet on his head, he enters Rome as the 
god of art. Servants bear before him the i,8oo crowns or 
chaplets he has won in Greece ; the five thousand Augustans 
march behind his chariot. A sacrifice is made to Apollo, 
and the games resume their familiar course. Then Nero is 
told that, though Vindex has committed suicide, the German 
and other legions have joined Galba, and the fire of revolt 
is spreading round the Empire, He announces that he 
will advance on Gaul. The ladies of his harem, who form 
a fair regiment, have their hair cut short, and, with toy 
shields and other theatrical properties, masquerade as 
Amazons. 

The last scene is brief and inevitable. Galba is 
marching on Rome, the Praetorian guards have been 
won for him, the nobles find it safe to desert Nero. 
The nerveless brute whimpers and weeps in his help- 
lessness. He will fly to Alexandria, and earn his living 
as a musician. The great " golden house " is silent and 
deserted. Rome is openly deriding him. His servants 
have fled ; one has even stolen the box in which he 



THE WIVES OF NERO 121 

kept poison for such an emergency. The faithful Acte, 
Sporus, and a very few of those who fed on his folly, 
remain with him, Messalina has deserted him, and will 
appear later as the friend of one of his successors. 

In the great silent house, with its walls of gold and 
its ceilings of ivory, he puts off the purple robes and 
clothes himself in an old shirt and a ragged cloak. On 
a miserable horse he rides with them across the vast 
deserted park, and makes for the house of one of his 
dependents, a few miles from Rome. There they admit 
him by a hole they have made in the wall, give him black 
bread and water, and cover him with a blanket. They 
discuss the situation, and conclude by offering him a 
dagger. He shrinks, like Julia, like Messalina, from the 
horrible darkness, and vainly strains his eyes for a ray 
of hope. At last they hear the clatter of cavalry on the 
road, and Nero feebly points the dagger at his breast, for 
a servant to drive home. And when the customary 
cremation is over, there are none but Acte and a faithful 
old nurse to lay the degraded ashes in the tomb. 

So the tenth Empress of Rome laid down her brief 
dignity. Statilia Messalina had had little reason to follow 
Nero in his humiliation. Whether the charge of laxity 
that is brought against her be true or no, she was a 
woman of exceptional intelligence and culture, and had 
probably only married Nero out of fear. We meet her 
again, at a later stage, in the chronicles. After Galba's 
short hour of supremacy we shall find an equally short 
reign of Salvius Otho, the man who once pillaged taverns 
with Nero in the Subura. Provincial government had 
sobered him, and he wrote affectionate letters to Messalina. 
He would, no doubt, have made her Empress once more 
if he had lived, but the throne was wrested from him, 
and Messalina retired to the calmer world of letters and 
rhetoric. Our last glimpse of her discovers her deliver- 
ing orations of great eloquence and learning among the 
intellectual ladies of Rome. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 

THE house of Caesar had perished with Nero, and 
few sober folk can have regretted that it had no 
living representative to win the fancy of the 
frivolous people or the blind cupidity of the Guards. 
There must have been men living in Rome who had 
witnessed the whole of that appalling degradation, so 
swift it had been. The Caesars had sunk in little over 
forty years from the sobriety of Octavian to the insanity 
of Nero ; their consorts had fallen from the strong standard 
of Livia to the insipidity of Poppaea ; the resources of the 
Empire had been squandered in spectacles that had left its 
people nerveless and debauched ; the old Roman ideal of 
character had been almost obliterated in the Imperial city. 
It was our concern to see what part the Empresses played 
in this lamentable history of four decades. It is, on the 
whole, one that their biographer must blush to acknow- 
ledge. We must remember, however, that corrupt rulers 
would necessarily choose weak or corrupt wives, and we 
cannot affect surprise or disappointment when we find 
them floating in the swift current. 

We have now to open a new and more attractive 
gallery of Imperial portraits, to pass in review the wives 
of those great Emperors who restored the high character 
of Rome and strengthened anew the fabric of the Empire. 
A very brief summary of events will suffice to link the 
Caesars with the Antonines, and introduce to us one or 
two curious types of Empresses who dimly figure in the 
transition. 

123 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 123 

For a year after the fall of Statilia Messalina the 
throne of the Empress was vacant, and that of the Em- 
peror had three successive occupants. Galba was a 
widower at the time of his elevation to the throne. We saw 
in an earlier chapter that Agrippina had wished to marry 
him twenty-six years earlier, and he had refused. His 
wife, Lepida, was a delicate woman, of high character, 
and he refused to divorce her. She had an energetic 
champion in her mother, who fought Agrippina sturdily 
and, if the story be true, laid fair patrician hands on her. 
But Lepida died long before her husband was made Em- 
peror, and he refused to marry again. His reign was brief. 
Tradition has blamed him for an excessive sternness and 
parsimony. They were not inopportune vices, but Rome 
had been too long habituated to indulgence, and Galba 
was too confident. The discontent at Rome was inflamed 
by the news of the revolt in the provinces, and within a few 
weeks the Guards, to whom he had refused the customary 
donation, set up a new Emperor, and put Galba to death. 

The new ruler was no other than the first husband of 
Poppaea, the companion of Nero's revels, Salvius Otho. 
Rome acclaimed the choice, and expected that the circus 
and theatre were about to reopen their doors. But Otho, 
who had matured during his years of office in Spain, 
turned from them in disgust. He did, it is true, restore 
the statues of Poppaea, and contemplated restoring the 
discarded statues of Nero, but the alienation of Roman 
feeling from him is a proof that he intended to rule with 
sobriety. The same spirit is seen in the fact that he 
. corresponded affectionately with Statilia Messalina, and 
apparently thought of marrying her. But the legions in 
the provinces almost immediately rebelled against him, 
and, in the midst of the struggle, he committed suicide. 

There had been no Empress of Rome for twelve 
months. With the death of Otho, and the accession of 
Vitellius, we come to the eleventh Empress, Galeria Fun- 
dana, a very new and incongruous type in the series of 
Imperial women. 



124 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

The name of Vitellius is already familiar to us. His 
father was the fulsome courtier who had inspired Caligula 
with the idea that he was a god, and who had worn one 
of Messalina's little silk shoes under his tunic. His wife, 
Sextilia, was a woman of strict morality and unambitious 
temper, but their son, the younger Vitellius, lived in too 
tainted an atmosphere to prefer the plainness of his 
mother to the craft and greed of his father. He had 
learned vice in the band of young men who brought so 
evil a fame on Tiberius's villa at Capri, and had made 
his way astutely through the successive reigns of Caligula, 
Claudius, and Nero. He had made a considerable fortune 
as proconsul of Africa, and had, on his return to Rome, 
married Petronia, the daughter of a wealthy consul. She 
settled her large fortune on her son, and when Vitellius, 
having consumed his own wealth in luxury and riot, went 
on to sacrifice his son for the purpose of securing the 
fortune held in his name, Petronia angrily remonstrated, 
and was divorced. 

He then married Galeria Fundana. She was, says 
Tacitus, " a pattern of virtue," and since this defect — as 
Vitellius would find it — was united with plainness of per- 
son, modesty of taste, and dull, if not defective, conversa- 
tion, the match was a singularly unhappy one. Vitellius 
had so far squandered his money that he was unable to 
pay his expenses to Lower Germany when Galba gave 
him the command of the troops there. How he obtained 
that important appointment is not clear. Some say that 
Galba selected him because he was not ambitious ; others 
that he secured it through the influence of the "blue" faction 
at the Circus, of which he was a partisan. He mortgaged 
his house, and Sextilia sold her jewels, to obtain funds 
for the journey. Fundana and her child were left in a 
poor tenement at Rome, little dreaming that they would 
be summoned from it to Nero's " golden house " in a few 
weeks. 

It is expressly recorded that Sextilia and Fundana had 
no ambition, and dreaded lest Vitellius should aspire to 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 125 

reach the dizzy heights which some early prophet had 
promised him. They were, therefore, dismayed to hear, 
shortly after his arrival on the Rhine, that the troops 
were offering to secure the throne for him. His genial 
and indulgent treatment of the soldiers was a betrayal of 
his trust to the stern Galba, and may have been deliber- 
ately effected to win their support. He became very 
popular, and was hailed as a second *' Germanicus." Galba 
was presently murdered, and, as the German legions had 
had no part in the choice of Otho, they urged Vitellius 
to lead them against him. Vitellius wavered for a time 
between the safe and considerable means of self-indulgence, 
which he had as commander, and the uncertain, but 
immeasurably greater, prospect which the throne sug- 
gested to his sensual dreams. The officers conquered 
his hesitation, and he set out for Rome in the rear of 
the eight legions who had declared for him. 

Sextilia and Fundana seemed to be in peril when the 
news came to Rome that Vitellius was marching upon the 
city. It is said that Vitellius threatened reprisals if his 
family were injured, but there is no indication that Otho 
would stoop to take a revenge on women and children. 
The}'^ saw him march out at the head of his troops to give 
battle to Vitellius, and waited anxiously, with all Rome, 
to hear the issue of the civil war. And while Senate and 
people were enjoying the mummery of the theatre, a horse- 
man rode in with the news that Otho had taken his own 
life, and Vitellius was leading his German troops upon 
Rome. Senate and people united at once to receive him, 
and sent him the title of Augustus. He politely dechned 
it for the time, and continued his leisurely march upon the 
city. There had been many a triumphant march over the 
roads of Italy in the annals of Rome, but never one so 
singular as that of the new monarch. " The roads from 
sea to sea groaned with the burden of his luxuries," says 
Tacitus ; and, if we distrust Tacitus, as an admirer of 
Vitellius's rival and successor, all the Roman writers agree 
that his first use of supreme power was to command a 



126 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

stupendous ministration to his sensual appetites. He 
ordered his legions to move slowly southward, while he, 
in their train, exhausted each successive region of its 
delicacies, and filled the days and nights with his princel}^ 
feasting. His example encouraged his wild German troops, 
and their line of march could be traced across Gaul and 
Italy by their pillage, cruelty, and debauchery. 

The repeated messages from the provinces filled Rome 
with laughter, in spite of its anxiety. People remembered 
this princely epicure sheltering, a few months before, in the 
poorer quarter of the town and evading the duns. The 
modest and virtuous Sextilia and Fundana shrank in pain 
from the hollow flattery which was paid them, and followed 
the march of the Emperor with disgust. He was approach- 
ing Rome at the head of sixty thousand men. Legions of 
tall, fierce, fur-clad Germans, with heavy javelins, were 
thundering along the Italian roads and terrifying the 
peasantry. In their rear was a vast army of slaves, cooks, 
comedians, charioteers, and other ministers to the Imperial 
appetite. He had sent for the whole of Nero's servants 
and appointments. It was said that he even intended to 
outrage one of the most sacred traditions of the city by 
entering it in full armour, at the head of an army with 
drawn swords ; but the friends who met him at the Milvian 
Bridge persuaded him to change his costume, and sheathe 
the swords of his soldiers. He entered, in civil toga, at 
the head of the terrible Germans, his officers clad in white 
as they bore the eagles. After visiting the Capitol, and 
addressing the Senate in terms of pleasant submissiveness 
to that body and of somewhat nauseating praise of himself, 
he settled in Nero's magnificent palace with Fundana and 
her child. His troops, debauched with the license of their 
march, scattered in disorder through the city ; and Rome 
resigned itself to the inauspicious rule of its eighth 
Emperor. 

We may dismiss the nine months in which Galeria 
Fundana was Empress of Rome in a phrase : she was a 
helpless and disgusted spectator of the most imperial 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 127 

debauch that Rome had 3''et witnessed. Dio strangely 
accuses her of haughtily complaining of the poverty of the 
robes she found in Nero's golden house, but the testimony 
to her modesty is too strong for us to admit this. A more 
credible statement in the chroniclers is that she begged to 
be allowed to retire to a humble dwelling of her own, and 
Vitellius refused. His mother did not long survive her 
mortification. One rumour preserved in Suetonius is that 
Vitellius had her starved to death, as it was predicted 
that she would outlive him ; another version says that he 
sent her poison, at her own request. Fundana was left 
alone to bewail his colossal gluttony. She saw his chief 
officers encourage him in his stupefying orgies, while they 
enriched themselves ; and she had to submit in silence 
while his sister-in-law, Triaria, " a woman of masculine 
fierceness," goaded him to continued excesses. During the 
few months of his reign he spent 900,000,000 sesterces 
(about ;^7,ooo,ooo) in eating, drinking, and entertainment. 
He had three meals during the day, and ended with a costly 
and drunken supper. His brother one day entertained him 
at a banquet, at which two thousand choice fishes and seven 
thousand rare birds were served. Vitellius in return gave 
a banquet, at which one dish — a compound of the livers of 
pheasants, the tongues of flamingoes, the brains of pea- 
cocks, the entrails of lampreys, and the roes of mullets — 
cost more than the whole of his brother's dinner. 

From this loathsome and stupid dream of Imperial 
power Vitellius was at length awakened by the echoes of 
rebellion in the provinces. After a few futile executions, 
and several relapses into his besetting gluttony, he was 
forced to set out for the north. He quickly returned, 
however, and wandered about Rome in hysterical im- 
potence, while the followers of Vespasian closed upon the 
city. Civil war had broken out, and the Romans gazed with 
horror on the sacred Capitol besieged by the German troops 
and bursting into flames. At last Vitellius came out with 
Fundana and her child, in mourning dress, and announced 
that he would resign. The consul refused his sword, and 



128 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the mournful procession directed its steps towards his 
brother's house. He was persuaded to return to the palace, 
but the Vespasianists captured Rome, and he was taken to 
Fundana's house on the Aventine. From this he somehow 
wandered back to the palace. '* The awful silence terrified 
him; he tried the closed doors, and shuddered at the empty 
chambers," sa3^s Tacitus. Dazed and incapable of flight, 
he hid in the sordid room where the dogs were kept. 
Here the soldiers found him, torn and bleeding, and forced 
him to walk the streets, while they kept his head erect 
with the point of a sword, and the people flung filth and 
epithets at him. They then inflicted on him a slow and 
painful death, and flung his remains in the Tiber. 

Fundana was spared, and her daughter honourably 
given in marriage, by his magnanimous successor. From 
the brief and unwelcome splendour of the " golden house" 
she passed into private life, and lived only to bemoan 
the cruel fate that had lifted her husband to the intoxi- 
cating height of the Roman throne. 

There was no Empress in the reigns of Vespasian and 
Titus, but a word may be said of the two remarkable 
women who shared their power to some extent. Vespasian, 
whose sober and solid administration it would be pleasant 
to contrast with the orgiastic reigns of his predecessors, 
was a rough soldier, of humble extraction and homely 
ways. He had, in the time of Caligula, married the 
mistress of a knight, Flavia Domitilla, who remains little 
more than a name in the chronicles. He had won dis- 
tinction under Narcissus, but the triumph of Agrippina 
drove him and Domitilla into exile. Nero employed him 
to crush the rebellion in Judaea, and it was during this 
campaign that his wife died, leaving him with her two 
sons — his successors — Titus and Domitian. He was, there- 
fore, a widower when the Eastern troops made him 
Emperor, but he took into his palace, and treated as 
Empress, an emancipated slave of the name of Csenis. 

The mistress of Vespasian has the distinction of being 
associated — actively and usefully associated — with him in 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 129 

one of the soundest attempts to restore the decaying 
Empire. She had been in the service of Antonia, the 
grandmother of Agrippina, and is said to have been the 
one who first disclosed to Tiberius the perfidy of Sejanus. 
From the first she was a dangerous rival of Domitilla, 
and, when his wife died, Vespasian entered into the quasi- 
matrimonial relation with her which is known in Roman 
law as contuhernium. She would probably have been 
Empress if the law had permitted him to contract a 
solemn marriage with her. She had considerable ability, 
but an unhappy reputation for extortion and the sale of 
offices. It is not clear, however, that the wealth she 
obtained did not contribute to Vespasian's rehabilitation 
of the resources of the Empire. They abandoned and 
destroyed the golden house of Nero, the central site of 
which is now marked by the Flavian Amphitheatre, or 
Coliseum. In their quiet gardens in the Quirinal they 
received any citizen who cared to visit them, and main- 
tained no timorous hedge of soldiers between themselves 
and their people. They wished to see money spent on 
public purposes, or hoarded for public emergencies, rather 
than squandered. " My hand is the base of the statue : 
give me the money," Caenis is said to have told a wealthy 
man who proposed to raise a statue to her; but Dio 
informs us that this and other stories of Caenis's avarice 
properly belong to Vespasian. She died, however — if the 
date assigned in Dio is correct — in the second year of 
Vespasian's reign, and must not be credited with too 
large a share in that great purification of Rome and re- 
invigoration of its life with healthy provincial blood which 
Tacitus regards as the beginning of the recovery of the 
Empire. 

Titus, who succeeded his father in the year 79, and 
reigned for two years, threatened at one time to give 
Rome an even more singular and unwelcome type of 
Empress. He had in early youth married Arricidia 
Tertulla, who died soon afterwards, and then Marcia 
Furnilla, a lady of illustrious family. He left his wife 
9 



130 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

in Rome when he took command under his father in 
Judsea, and became infatuated with a brilUant princess 
of the Herod family, Berenice. He divorced Furnilla, 
and brought Berenice to live with him at Rome. But 
the Romans resented the prospect of a Jewish Empress, 
and she was forced to return. On his accession to the 
throne he made no attempt to enforce her on them. He 
reigned alone for two years, " the love and delight of 
the human race," and maintained the sober administration 
of his father. 

With the accession of his younger brother, Domitian, 
Rome received a new Empress, and, by an unhappy 
coincidence, saw the imperial palace return to the evil 
ways of the Csesars. Those of our time who attach 
almost the entire importance to stock or birth, and little 
to circumstances, in the formation of character, will find 
a peculiar problem in Domitian and his wife. The 
Emperor was the second son of the " plain Sabine burgher" 
and sturdy soldier, Vespasian, and of the lowly provincial 
woman, Flavia Domitilla. The Empress, Domitia Longina, 
was the daughter of Domitius Corbulo, one of the strongest 
and ablest generals that Rome produced in the first 
century. Yet of these sound and vigorous stocks came, 
in one generation, one of the most morbid of the 
Emperors and an Empress who, in some respects, rivalled 
Messalina. Rome knew them both, and had no false 
hope. 

Domitia — as she is usually called — makes her first 
appearance as a young girl of great beauty and promise, 
caressed and protected by the wealth and prestige of her 
distinguished father, who, it is interesting to note, was a 
brother of Caligula's masculine wife Caesonia. She was 
married to a noble of distinction and character, Lucius 
iElius Lamia iEmilianus, and she seems to have been an 
estimable young matron until her father incurred the anger 
of Nero and was forced to commit suicide. Procopius and 
Josephus, indeed, represent her as virtuous to the end, but 
there seems to be little room for doubt that the nearer and 




DOMITIA 

BUST IN UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 131 

less indulgent authorities are correct. Her young mind 
opened on the sordid scenes of the closing part of Nero's 
reign and the folly of Vitellius. She then met the 
fascinating and effeminate Domitian, and very speedily 
capitulated to his assaults. 

Gibbon speaks of him as "the timid and inhuman 
Domitian," while Dio opens his biographical sketch of the 
Emperor with the deliberate epithet, " bold and wrathful." 
We shall find a very natural dread of assassination in 
Domitian's later years, but he was undoubtedly bold and 
crafty in the service of Venus, and a stranger to moral 
sentiment. His elder brother Titus had developed the 
manly qualities of their father on the battlefields of Judaea, 
and had proved strong enough to crush his irregular 
feelings on his accession to the throne. Domitian had 
remained at Rome, discharging only Icivic duties, and had 
become one of the most heartless dandies in the group of 
degenerate young patricians. During the civil strife of the 
Vitellianists and Vespasianists on the streets of Rome he 
had made his escape in the fitting disguise of a priest of 
Isis, Titus knew his vicious and luxurious ways, and en- 
deavoured to check him by offering him his own charming 
daughter Julia in marriage; but Domitian was engaged 
in fascinating the pretty and accomplished wife of Lamia 
iEmilianus, and refused. Titus, on his accession, associated 
him in the government, and his first act was to separate 
his mistress from her husband, and marry her, 

Domitia's triumph was quickly tempered with morti- 
fication. Julia married her cousin Sabinus, and, out of 
pique or devilry, Domitian now discovered her charm and 
seduced her. To such a pair as these the attainment of 
supreme power meant an occasion of Imperial license, and 
sober Romans saw their community rapidly lose the ground 
that had been won in the previous reigns. It was even 
rumoured that Domitian had hastened his brother's death 
by putting him in a box of snow during his last illness, 
though this remains no more than an idle rumour. At all 
events, Domitia soon discovered the despicable character 



132 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

for whom — or for whose prospects — she had abandoned 
her saner husband. While the affairs of the Empire needed 
his most strenuous attention, he would spend hours catching 
flies and spitting them with a bodkin ; and from the 
spitting of flies he presently passed to the larger sport of 
murdering men. He conducted his little frontier-wars from 
safe and luxurious quarters, and came home to enjoy a 
triumph and erect a colossal bronze memorial of his valour. 
He banished eunuchs from Rome, and kept them in his 
palace ; waged war against vice in all forms, and practised 
it in all forms. In the general relaxation of Roman 
manners even the Vestal Virgins had been for some 
decades permitted an alleviation of their onerous vows. 
Domitian posed as a moralist, on no other apparent ground 
than that he was closely acquainted with every shade of 
immorality, and drastically punished them. He raised 
fine public buildings, and depleted the public treasury by 
reckless expenditure and incompetent administration ; pro- 
secuted officials for extortion, and put men to death for 
their wealth ; gave brilliant entertainments, and darkened 
the city and the Empire with his sanguinary brooding. 

If we were to accept Josephus's estimate of the virtue of 
Domitia, we should conceive her as living in melancholy 
isolation in the gloomy palace, an outraged spectator of 
her husband's relations with Julia, But there is good 
evidence that she sought relief with something of the 
freedom of a Messalina. An authentic occurrence in the 
third year of Domitian's reign puts her guilt beyond ques- 
tion. He had the actor Paris murdered in the street, and 
divorced Domitia. The people boldly sympathized with 
her, and covered with flowers the spot on which Paris had 
been killed. The Emperor had a number of them executed, 
but public feeling seems to have been expressed so strongly 
that he was forced to recall Domitia to the palace, and the 
sordid comedy ran on amid the jeers of Rome. A poet 
was put to death for making it the theme of his verse; 
Domitia's former husband and others were executed for 
their freedom of speech. Then the beautiful and capti- 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 133 

vating Julia perished miserably in an attempt of Domitian's 
to destroy the too obvious proof of their incest, and he 
became more sombre than ever. 

This is not the place to tell the long and dreary story 
of the reign of Domitian, of which, for twelve further years, 
the Empress remains an inconspicuous, and perhaps a 
sobered, spectator. For a few years he maintained his 
singular and obscure mixture of good and evil, but the 
brighter features of his administration gradually faded, 
and a horrible gloom settled on the palace and the city. 
Hosts of spies and informers sprang up ; large numbers 
of nobles, of both sexes, were executed or banished, on 
the slightest suspicion, and their wealth divided between 
the informers and the Emperor's shrinking treasury. So 
great was his dread of assassination that he lined the 
portico at the palace, in which he used to walk, with white 
glazed tiles that would reflect the approach of any person 
behind him. But an extraordinary incident that Dio relates 
will suffice to give some idea of the reign of terror under 
which the Empress and all Rome suffered. 

A number of the leading citizens of Rome were sum- 
moned to a banquet at the palace at a late hour of the 
night. They were frozen with horror when they found 
that the entire dining-room — walls, ceiling, and floor — 
was draped in black, and a miniature tombstone, with his 
name engraved on it, was placed opposite each guest. As 
they gazed, a number of nude boys, whose bodies were 
washed with ink, burst into the room and danced amongst 
them, and then the dishes of a funeral banquet were served. 
The guests sat silent and shivering; the Emperor grimly 
discoursed to them of deaths and executions. When the 
banquet was over, they were relieved to find themselves 
dismissed. They found, however, that their litters had 
been sent away, and they were put into strange vehicles, 
with strange servants. The gloomy journey ended at their 
own houses, and they were beginning to breathe, when 
they were thrown into fresh alarm by the news that a 
messenger had come from the palace. The messenger to 



134 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

each guest was one of the dancing boys, now cleaned, 
perfumed, and clothed with flowers, bearing the gold and 
silver vessels which the guest had used at the banquet. 
The boys and the dishes were presented to them with the 
Emperor's greeting. 

Unhappily, Domitian did not confine himself to intimi- 
dation. The heads of the wealthier nobles fell in quick 
succession, and, in great secrecy, amid an army of spies, 
the Empress and a few others came to an understanding. 
The story of the actual fall of the tyrant has clearly 
been embroidered with a good deal of unauthentic detail 
in popular gossip, but even in its most sober version it does 
not lack romance. 

The version which Dio assures us he " had heard " is 
one that the conscientious historian must hesitate to accept. 
The Emperor, he says, had been informed of the con- 
spiracy, and had drawn up a list of those who were to be 
executed for taking part in it. He put the list under his 
pillow, with the sword which he always kept there, and 
went to sleep. We have previously seen something of 
the bejewelled boys who used to run with great freedom 
about the palaces of the Romans of the first century. 
Domitian, the great censor of other people's vices, had a 
number of them, and the legend is that one of them, playing 
in his bedroom, noticed the parchment under his pillow, 
and took it out into the palace. Domitia met the boy, and 
idly glanced at the parchment. She saw her own name 
at the head of the list of the condemned, and at once 
summoned the other conspirators. They entered the 
Emperor's room, snatched the sword from under his pillow, 
and despatched him. 

Pretty as the story is, we must prefer the more prosaic 
account given us by Suetonius, who lived in the next 
generation. Domitia felt that the Emperor had at last 
conceived a design on her life, and she sent her steward 
to despatch him. He offered Domitian a fictitious report 
of a plot, and stabbed him while he read it. Other servants 
rushed in at the signal, and completed the assassination. 



THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 135 

It is the one action that historians have recorded to the 
honour of the twelfth Empress of Rome, and we leave 
her company with little regret. She was an ordinary 
woman of the patrician world at the time — fair, frail, accom- 
plished, and luxurious. With the death of her husband 
she merges in the indistinguishable crowd of selfish and 
wayward ladies on whom Juvenal was then beginning to 
pour his exaggerated rhetoric. 

It remains to describe very briefly how the sceptre 
passes into the nobler hands of the Stoic Emperors and 
their wives. The throne was offered to, and accepted by, 
M. Cocceius Nerva, an aged noble of known moderation 
and long public service. He at once removed all traces 
of the hateful reign of his predecessor, and entered upon 
a sober and useful administration of the Empire. He was 
in the later sixties of his age, and we find no mention of 
a wife. But the task of enforcing sobriety on so corrupted 
a population was too great for his age and moderate ability. 
A conspiracy against him was discovered. He disarmed 
the conspirators by inviting them to sit by him in the 
theatre, and even putting a sword in their hands and asking 
them what they thought of its keenness ; but he saw that 
a stronger man was needed, and he chose as his colleague 
Marcus Ulpius Nerva Trajanus, a Spaniard of great 
military ability and commanding personality, who was 
then at the head of the troops in Germany. Nerva died 
soon afterwards, and, with the accession of Trajan, we 
come to the thirteenth Empress of Rome and the com- 
mencement of a new and more splend'id chapter in the 
story of the Empire. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PLOTINA 

" T F," says Gibbon, " a man were called to fix the period 
\^ in the history of the world, during which the con- 
dition of the human race was most happy and pros- 
perous, he would, without hesitation, name that which 
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of 
Commodus " ; and he observes of Antoninus Pius and 
Marcus Aurelius that "their united reigns are possibly 
the only period of history in which the happiness of a great 
people was the sole object of government." 

This monumental eulogy of the period which we now 
approach — a eulogy which the more penetrating study of 
Renan and the more recent research of M. Boissier and 
Dr. Dill have not materially lessened — will suffice to warn 
the inexpert reader against the ancient and popular legend 
that Rome continued to sink under the burden of its vices 
until it tottered into the tomb of outworn nations. Under 
the Empresses whom we have now to consider there was 
a great improvement of character and recovery of vigour 
in the Roman Empire, but before we pass to that brighter 
phase I would enter a brief protest against the general 
exaggeration of the darkness of the period we have tra- 
versed. Even under its worst rulers Rome was far from 
being wholly corrupt. The vices of a Messalina, the crimes 
of an Agrippina, and the follies of a Poppaea, stand out 
so prominently in that period only because they were 
perpetrated on the height of the throne. Even they were 
hardly worse than the crimes and follies of the wives or 

136 



PLOTINA 137 

mistresses of kings in many a less censured period of 
history ; and, if you care to count them, the liHes were as 
numerous as the poppies in this first series of Empresses, 
but the liHes drooped earher, and have been less noticed. 
Whenever, in the course of our story, the light has passed 
from the throne to the less elevated crowd, we have found 
fine character mingled with the corrupt even in the darkest 
years of the early Empire. The heads that fell before 
the Imperial monsters were as many as the heads that 
bowed. 

The truth is that, if we are not misled by the hasty 
generalizations and plebeian diatribes which Juvenal, in his 
" Satires," founds upon the dubious bits of gossip that he 
picked up on the fringe of Roman society, and against 
which historians now warn us, there was much the same 
diversity of conduct in the early Empire as in most of the 
corresponding periods of luxury. The wealthier women 
of Rome assuredly fell far short of the cloistered virtue of 
the maid and the matron of Greece ; but Greece had only 
succeeded in maintaining that standard of domestic virtue 
in its wives and daughters by cultivating a high caste of 
courtesans for their roaming husbands. It may be ad- 
mitted, too, that the Roman woman was morally inferior 
to the wife of the Egyptian noble, and to the wife of the 
noble or the wealthy merchant of Babylonia. But the 
patrician women, even of Csesarean Rome, will compare 
with the women of most of the later civilizations at the 
same stage of development ; at the stage, that is to say, 
when the nation relaxes from the strain of empire-making, 
and its veins are flushed with the wealth of its conquests, 
I would instance the women of the early Teutonic nations 
as soon as they settle on southern Europe ; the women of 
Italy in the early Middle Ages ; the women of England 
under the Stuarts and, after a later expansion, under the 
Georges ; the women of France under Louis XIII and 
Louis XIV ; the women of Russia in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. At Rome, in spite of the positive insistence on vice 
of Caligula, Messalina, and Nero, in spite of their determined 



138 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

effort to weed out the good, we have found virtue and 
courage springing up afresh in each generation. 

We now come to a period when, three centuries before 
the fall of Rome, the Empire is purged of its exceptional 
corruption, and character assumes the normal diversity 
that it has in any old and wealthy civilization. The city 
of Rome was assuredly vicious and in decay. But the city 
was not the Empire, as those rhetoricians forget who talk 
of its entire demoralization. Rome had been drenched 
with degrading agencies for half a century ; but there was 
a quite normal amount of stout will and high character in 
the provinces, and this is now infused more freely into the 
metropolis. It is only by a similar influx of sounder blood 
from the provinces that any great city survives the feverish 
waste of its tissue. The remedy was retarded in Rome 
because the provincials, even of Italy, but especially of 
Gaul and Spain, were of alien race. Rome jealously 
remembered that it was the conqueror ; the rest were the 
conquered. Under Vespasian, however, the provincials 
were admitted more freely, and with the accession of a 
Spaniard, Trajan, the process increased. 

In the remote and primitive settlement which Agrippina 
had established on the banks of the Rhine, where the 
towers of Cologne Cathedral now keep watch over a 
splendid city, there dwelt, in the year 97, the commander 
of the forces in Lower Germany, Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, 
with his wife and a few female relatives. Trajan was of a 
moderate Spanish family, and had, like his father, cut his 
own path in the military service of the Empire. He was 
unambitious, but popular. A large, handsome man, in his 
forty-fifth year, of singularly graceful bearing and serene 
features, he charmed everybody by his simplicity and 
affability of manner, and liked a good carouse and a rough 
soldierly jest. His wife Plotina was a plain, honest matron 
of unknown origin. It has been conjectured that she was 
related to Pompeius Planta, at one time Governor of 
Egypt, but the only ground for the conjecture seems to 
be that Planta was a friend of Trajan's. As she had 



PLOTINA 139 

neither beauty of person nor romantic defect of character, 
the chroniclers have left her largely to our imagination ; 
but she was a type of woman whom it is not difficult to 
picture — a woman of plain features, level judgment, and of 
what is euphemistically called grave but agreeable con- 
versation. She was by no means brilliant, but her close 
friendship for Hadrian suggests that she was not too dull 
and prosy, and had pretensions to culture. Her ways were 
simple, and her character can be relieved of the one 
imputation made against it. She compares well with 
Livia, but as a higher bourgeoise compares with a grande 
dame. In a word, she had none of the autumnal colour, 
the beauty of decay, of the Caesarean women, but she had 
the less aesthetic and more useful quality that they lacked, 
conscientiousness. To the courtly Pliny (" Panegyr.," 83) 
she is the embodiment of all the virtues. 

With her at Cologne was Trajan's sister Marciana, a 
widow of much the same complexion as Plotina, and 
Marciana's daughter Matidia, who in turn had two daughters, 
Sabina and Matidia. We can imagine the agitation of this 
tranquil establishment among the forests of Germany when 
a courier came from Rome with the news that Trajan was 
chosen as colleague of the Emperor. They had left Rome 
six years before, in the middle of Domitian's reign. How- 
ever, they seem to have received very sedately the prospect 
of a removal from the camp on the Rhine to the Imperial 
palace. Although Nerva died in the following January (98), 
Trajan remained for the year in Germany, completing his 
task of strengthening the frontier against the northern 
barbarians. Then the family set out on the long journey 
to the capital. 

The fame of Trajan's simplicity and geniality of manner 
had preceded him, but Rome looked with surprise on an 
Emperor who could wait a year before occupying the 
palace, enter the city on foot, without guards, and talk so 
affably with any of his subjects. Nor was Plotina long 
before she showed that they had received a new type of 
Empress. As she ascended the steps of the palace, she 



I40 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

turned round and said to those below : " As I enter here 
to-day, I trust I shall leave it when the time comes." The 
refreshing amiability, simplicity, and moderation of the 
Imperial couple captivated the Romans, and Trajan re- 
sponded to their good will with the most judicious and 
untiring exertions in the public service. He trod out at 
once the hideous brood of informers, checked corrupt 
officials, and appointed the best men to public offices. 
Indifferent to the splendour and luxury of even the modest 
palace of Vespasian, he spent most of his reign in frontier- 
wars or in long journeys for the purpose of bracing the 
relaxed frame of the Empire ; and he enriched and adorned 
Rome as no Emperor had done since Octavian. 

That he was vigorously supported by Plotina is quite 
certain, and there is evidence that she was much more than 
a sympathetic witness of his labours. It is related by the 
Emperor Julian that Trajan often sought the advice of 
Plotina, and that it was always sound. At the beginning 
of his reign she had occasion to use her influence. Trajan's 
dislike of informers was carried so far that, when a case of 
real extortion occurred in the provinces, the injured were 
prevented from bringing it to his notice. They appealed 
to Plotina, and she put the case judiciously to her husband 
and secured relief. In many other ways she gave useful 
assistance, so that the Senate offered the title of Augusta 
to her and Marciana. They declined, as Trajan had refused 
the special title offered to him, but he relented, and they 
followed his example. 

The reign of Trajan and Plotina was thus one long 
episode of strenuous and enhghtened public service, but 
before we enter into the particulars of their achievements 
it is proper to endeavour to obtain a nearer view of their 
personalities. In this the chroniclers give us little assist- 
ance, and the result cannot be very interesting. It is ever 
the painful reflection of the biographer that the description 
of a sober life — a life which neither sinks to the lower levels 
of vice nor soars to some unaccustomed height of virtue — 
has little interest for the majority of his readers ; and this 



PLOTINA 141 

was the life of the Imperial court during the twenty years 
of Trajan's reign. The Emperor himself was no paragon. 
Preferring the easy ways of a camp, he drank somewhat 
deeply of nights, his jests were apt to be coarse, and he 
was popularly accused of the vice which so generally 
infected the men of the Empire Yet he-had this distinction 
in a long line of Emperors, in the prime of life, that no 
woman ever shared, or sullied, his affection for Plotina. 
Gibbon has remarked, in extenuation of the conduct of his 
successor, that " of the first fifteen Emperors, Claudius was 
the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct." 
That would be a high compliment to Messalina, but in 
point of fact, as we saw, Claudius was not entitled to that 
distinction. The charge against Trajan is vague, and we 
must rather award the distinction to him. Merivale some- 
what harshly speaks of him as only maintaining his self- 
respect because of the bluntness of his moral sense. If we 
put his strong sense of public duty and his fidelity in the 
scale against his one certain indulgence, in drink, we shall 
hardly agree to that verdict. 

The virtue of Plotina, on the other hand, has been more 
seriously assailed by both ancient and recent writers. In 
the service of the Emperor was a very handsome and 
accomplished youth named Hadrian, an orphan, with great 
taste and skill in art and letters. He had been employed 
by Trajan at Cologne, both in military service and in filling 
up the long nights with an occasional carouse, and, after 
their return to Rome, he was a great favourite of the ladies 
at the palace. They formed a little circle in which letters 
were discussed and literary men were patronized. There 
was something of a literary revival ; it was the age of 
Juvenal, Martial, Quinctilian, Pliny, Suetonius, Celsus, and 
Dio Chrysostom. Hadrian was a brilliant student, and he 
appreciated this open and easy way to distinction. Trajan 
is represented as using the young man for companion, but 
not regarding him as fitted for promotion, so that it fell to 
Plotina to urge, and ultimately to make, the fortune of 
the future Emperor. The magnificent mausoleum which 



142 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME ^ 

Hadrian raised in memory of her long testified to his 
ardent and grateful attachment. 

There is a good deal of exaggeration in this conception. 
We shall see that Trajan promoted Hadrian in such a way 
as to mark him in the eyes of all as his successor ; and his 
chief advisers in this were the statesmen Sura and Attianus. 
In any case, there is no proof that Plotina, who must have 
been twenty years older than Hadrian, felt more than a 
very natural fondness for the gifted and charming youth. 
Pliny mentions that her friendship for him gave rise to 
gossip, but insists that she was " a most virtuous woman." 
The "Augustan History" leaves her unassailed. Suetonius 
has no scandal to record. Dio alone describes their attach- 
ment as " erotic love " ; but on an earlier page Dio has 
expressly said that her career was stainless. When he has 
described her standing at the top of the palace steps, to say 
that she trusted to leave that palace just as she entered it, 
he adds : " And she so bore herself throughout the whole 
reign as to incur no blame." ^ The remarkable eulogy of 
Pliny, the silence of the other authorities, and the conduct 
of Trajan, must enable us to choose between these contra- 
dictory statements of Dio, and indeed compel us to reject 
this unsubstantial charge against the virtue of Plotina. 

The other ladies of the Imperial household were equally 
without reproach, and life at the palace was harmonious 
and uneventful. Emperor and Empress moved about 
Rome without guards, and entertained, or were entertained 
by, their friends in a simple and unceremonious way. But 
Trajan had little love for the atmosphere of a palace, and 
an outbreak in Dacia, two years after his arrival in Rome, 
gave him an excuse to return to the camp. He took 
Hadrian with him, and remained in Dacia a year. In the 
year 103 he rejoined Plotina at Rome, but the war broke 
out afresh shortly afterwards, and it now took him three 
years to subdue the province and link it to the Empire by 
a great bridge over the Danube. He returned in 107, and 

* Ka\ ovro) ye iavrfjv 8ia Tvdarjs rijf apx>js Birjyayev wars nr]8tfi.iav (rnjyopiau 
(Txflv: Ixviii. 5. 




PLOTINA 

STATUE IN THE I.OUVRE 



m^'X-j-A isnr^zixz^i: I 



-r'^n 



PT.OTINA 143 

spent seven years in Rome before he set out on his final 
journey in the year 114. 

The prolonged absence of the Emperor threw a good 
deal of responsibility on Plotina, and it would be of great 
interest, if it were possible, to trace her share in the vast 
work which was done for the city and the Empire at that 
time. This, unfortunately, we cannot do. There were able 
counsellors left at Rome in Trajan's absence, and no doubt 
most of the work was directly controlled by Trajan during 
his stay in Rome from 107 to 114. We know only that he 
conferred freely with Plotina, and that he left great power 
to her when he went abroad. We can, therefore, only 
regard her, in a general way, as contributing to the 
prosperity and progress that characterize the reign of her 
husband. She kept Rome tranquil and content, and no 
doubt followed with close interest the great improvements 
which Trajan commanded. The neck of hill which linked 
the Capitoline to the Quirinal, in the heart of Rome, was 
cut away, and a fine Forum, or broad street with sheltered 
colonnade on either side, was constructed on the cleared 
ground between the hills. As previous Emperors had 
already made slight extensions of the old Forum, the 
citizens of Rome now had, in the centre of the city, a 
magnificent corso running out toward the great Circus, in 
the porticoes of which the packed dwellers of the Subura on 
one side, and Velabrum on the other, could lounge and take 
the air with comfort. Nor was this a mere meretricious 
concession to their entertainment. Trajan was equally 
attentive to their education. A beautiful basilica, two public 
libraries — one for Greek and one for Roman letters — and 
other splendid buildings were raised along the sides of the 
new Forum, and statues of marble and bronze were brought 
from all parts, even from the palace, to adorn it. 

Other cities of the Empire shared in the generosity 
and public spirit of the new reign. Harbours were con- 
structed for the increase of commerce, fresh roads were 
flung across the intervening country, and many towns 
were enriched with stimulating public edifices. Nor were 



144 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the social needs of the Empire less regarded than the 
material. Previous Emperors had given a scanty practical 
expression to the doctrine of the brotherhood of men, 
which the Stoic philosophy was disseminating, Trajan 
gave a great extension to this new philanthropy, as we 
learn from the inscriptions that have been found in the soil 
of Italy. It is estimated that 300,000 poor and orphaned 
children were fed by charity or Imperial aid in Italy alone. 
The lot of the slave was improved, and the school system of 
the Empire became better than any that has since appeared 
in Europe until the second half of the nineteenth century. 
Men were returning to the sobriety of their fathers, and 
were tempering it with the new spirit of peace and mercy, 
and a regard for culture. Morality improved, and character 
became a qualification for office. The one open scandal of 
the long reign — an intrigue of the Vestal Virgins with three 
young knights — was punished with all the rigour of the old 
Roman law. 

We must be content to know that Plotina had her 
part in this noble work of restoring the jaded frame of 
the Empire, and refrain from attempting to measure her 
particular influence. By the year 114 the administration 
ran so smoothly, and the Western world was so settled, 
that Trajan turned his attention to the East. The Parthians 
had been interfering in the affairs of the Ethiopians, who 
were vassals of Rome, and Trajan saw in this a pretext 
of establishing more strongly, if not enlarging, the eastern 
frontier of the Empire. He had never been in the East, 
and the deep attraction of its ancient cities and decadent 
mysticism gave a cultural interest to his expedition. He 
took with him Plotina and Matidia, his niece. Marciana 
seems to have died before this time, and Hadrian had 
married Sabina, the daughter of Matidia. Hadrian, and 
probably his wife, accompanied them. 

The path to the East for the Roman lay through Athens, 
where Plotina and her companions would survey the 
decaying splendour of the Greek civilization in which 
they had long been interested. Envoys from the Parthians 



PLOTINA 145 

met Trajan there, and tried to disarm him, but he dis- 
missed them, and pushed on to the field in which he trusted 
to win fresh laurels. They reached Antioch at the end 
of the year, and had, during their stay in that metropolis 
of Oriental vice and luxury, a novel experience. A great 
earthquake shook the city, and even the house in which 
the Emperor lodged. He was forced to make his escape 
by the window. The accounts of their later movements 
are meagre, and we can only imagine Plotina passing 
with wonder through the strange spectacles of western 
Asia. During the spring and summer an indecisive 
campaign was waged against the Parthians, and Trajan 
returned to Antioch for the winter. In the spring of the 
year 116 the Emperor set out again for Mesopotamia. He 
passed down the Euphrates, took the Parthian capital, 
sailed on the Persian Gulf, and even directed a longing 
eye over the ocean in the direction of India. The spirit 
of Alexander breathed in him as he trod this theatre 
of the historic conquerors, but the burden of age and an 
increasing infirmity put a reluctant limit to his ambition. 
He had, in fact, passed the range of his powers, and 
distended too far the frontier of the Empire. In the 
following year he became weaker, and the Eastern tribes 
advanced with spirit. Leaving the task to his generals, 
the Emperor turned towards Italy. 

How far Plotina had accompanied her husband on 
these remote journeys we are not informed. It would 
not be surprising, or out of harmony with a general custom 
of the time, if she covered the whole, or the greater part, 
of the territory with him. However that may be, we 
find her with Trajan and Hadrian at Antioch once more in 
the course of the year 117. Trajan was seriously ill, and 
had to abandon all hope of settling the Eastern question. 
He maintained the troops at the frontier, left Hadrian at 
Antioch as legate of the East, and slowly and sadly moved 
towards Europe. His tall frame was bent with age, his 
hair was white, his limbs made heavy with dropsy and 
numbed with incipient paralysis. When they arrived at 
10 



146 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Selinus, a small town on a precipitous rock of the Cilician. 
coast, only a few hundred miles from Edessa, his illness 
increased, and he died, in the month of August, 117, in 
the sixty-third year of his age. 

The exact truth about Plotina's conduct at the time 
of Trajan's death will never be known, but an impartial 
analysis of the statements made by the chroniclers cannot 
discover any clear ground for dissatisfaction. Dio, whose 
authority on this point is claimed to be considerable, since 
his father was then governor of the province of Cilicia, 
first insinuates a suggestion of poison, in the usual form 
of an unsubstantial rumour, and then insists that Plotina 
forged a letter in Trajan's name, nominating Hadrian 
his successor in the Imperial power. The writer of the 
sketch of Hadrian in the " Historia Augusta," Spartianus, 
carries the legend further. He describes how Plotina put 
a confidant in the bed of the dead Emperor, drew the 
clothes about him, and directed him to murmur, in a 
feeble voice, to the assembled officials that he wished 
Hadrian to succeed him. This second version is wholly 
negligible. It comes only from an anonymous writer of 
the fourth century who excites our distrust at all times 
by his extravagant and unsupported statements. The 
latest commentators on his work warn us that his aim 
is prurient and his method devoid of scruple. 

The authority of Dio, on the other hand, must not be 
exaggerated. His father might purvey gossip to him, like 
any other Greek or Roman, and his story of the forged 
letter — or forged signature to a letter — might easily be 
a piece of local gossip. Plotina was evidently anxious 
to secure the succession for Hadrian, and one may well 
admit that she concealed her husband's death until Hadrian 
arrived at Selinus. That concealment would easily give 
rise to conjectures. Serviez naturally forces on his readers 
the more romantic version, but more sober writers acquit 
Plotina of anything more than a formal use of Trajan's 
name after his death. 

The suggestion of poison is frivolous. Trajan had been 



PLOTINA 147 

ailing for months, and his assiduous travelling in a climate 
so different from that to which he had been accustomed all 
his life must have worn him out. He arrived in Asia 
Minor in the sweltering and dangerous month of August, 
and a touch of the enteric fever which so commonly over- 
came the European in the insanitary East of the time put 
an end to his life, Plotina had for some time urged him to 
nominate Hadrian as his successor. We must not hastily 
infer from his reluctance that he thought Hadrian unfit to 
succeed him. He had just left him in a position of the 
gravest responsibility, and must have appreciated what a 
great historian calls Hadrian's "vast and active genius." 
But he may not have deemed it proper for him to dictate 
to the Senate how they should exercise their power of 
choice. What actually occurred is certainly obscure, A 
letter was dispatched to the Senate, after Trajan's death, 
in which Hadrian was nominated, and Dio says that the 
signature was put to this letter by Plotina. One would 
imagine that such a deception, as Dio represents it to 
be, would easily be detected and resented by Hadrian's 
powerful enemies in the Senate. It is probable that, as 
Merivale supposes, the letter was really dictated by Trajan, 
and the signing of it by Plotina was only formal. We may 
admit Dio's narrative of facts, yet believe that the Empress 
was merely carrying out Trajan's will. 

On the other hand, there is no reason to quarrel with, 
or put a base interpretation on, her zeal for the succession 
of Hadrian. We shall see how well he maintained the 
sound work of Trajan. He was at once summoned to 
Selinus, to consult with Plotina and with the elderly 
Senator Attianus, who had been his guardian together 
with Trajan, and had been as zealous as the Empress 
in urging his advancement. They decided that Hadrian 
must return to his post at Antioch, and Plotina set out 
for Rome with the ashes of her husband in a golden urn. 
The last resting-place of Trajan was under the magnificent 
column which still bears witness in Rome to his many 
victories, and for centuries afterwards the most flattering 



148 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

compliment that the Senators could pay to an Emperor 
was to cry that he was "more fortunate than Augustus, 
and better than Trajan." 

Plotina lived at Rome for four years after the death of 
her husband. The first year was, as we shall see, one of 
great anxiety and trial. There was much discontent at 
Hadrian's accession, and before long his reign was stained 
by the execution of four of the most distinguished nobles. 
Matidia died in the following year, and it was known to 
all Rome that Sabina lived unhappily with Hadrian. It is 
said that Plotina continued to have an active share in the 
administration of the Empire, though she must now have 
been in, or near, her seventh decade of life. Dio places 
her death in the year 121. Hadrian was in Gaul at the 
time, and the luxuriance of his mourning gave encourage- 
ment to the libellers. He went into deep mourning, 
breathed a passionate grief in a beautiful poem, and ordered 
the building of a temple for the cult of the divinity which 
he conferred on her. In Nimes, where he was staying at 
the time when her death was announced, he raised the 
superb mausoleum which kept her name for ages in the 
mind of Europe. 

It is both pleasant and legitimate to believe that there 
was neither rhetorical display nor the memory of an 
irregular love in the princely mourning of Hadrian over 
the death of his patroness. Apart from his own indebted- 
ness to her, the world owed her much. She had been at 
least a most worthy and helpful companion of a great 
Emperor, a type of womanhood to which the eyes of 
Roman matrons might happily be directed. On the day 
when her inanimate frame was borne from the palace to 
the funeral pile, men could repeat that she had in truth 
left that home of temptation as she had entered it. The 
saner and sunnier life of the vast Empire was, in part, her 
monument.^ 

* Duruy quotes Aurelius Victor (" Epitome," xiv) as saying : " It is impos- 
sible to say how much Plotina enhanced the glory of Trajan." The passage 
is really found in c. xxxix of the "Epitome." 



CHAPTER IX 

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 

WE are already familiar with the extraction and the 
training of the next Empress of Rome. Sabina 
was the elder daughter of Trajan's niece Matidia, 
and came of the sound and sober stock of the Spanish 
provincials. We first meet her in the little settlement on 
the Rhine, where she lived with her widowed mother and 
grandmother, in Trajan's house, during the reign of Galba 
and Nerva. She was in her early teens, a grave and 
modest child, easily directed by the three sedate ladies of 
the house. Very shortly after the accession of Trajan, a 
charming young officer burst into the camp to offer his 
congratulations. He had a romantic story to tell, how a 
jealous brother-in-law had bribed his servants to break 
down the chariot on the way, and he had crossed the great 
forests on foot to greet his guardian and cousin. It was 
the future Emperor, and her future husband, Hadrian. 

The wicked brother-in-law, Ursus Servianus, presently 
arrived, and put before Trajan a proof of his ward's 
enormities in the shape of a list of his debts. But Trajan 
was charmed with the handsome and brilliant young 
officer, kept him in his suite, and took him to Rome when 
he went up to occupy the throne; and we saw that he 
became a great favourite of the Imperial ladies. His 
father had been a first cousin of Trajan, but Hadrian lost 
him at the age of ten, and was committed to the guardian- 
ship of Trajan and Attianus. The finest masters of Rome 
directed his studies in letters, art, rhetoric, and philosophy, 

149 



I50 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

and he became a most accomplished and learned, as well 
as, by hunting and exercise, a graceful and energetic youth. 
The " Historia Augusta " expressly says that Trajan " loved 
him," and he advanced quickly, and enjoyed the brilliant 
literary society of the palace and the capital. About two 
years after their coming to Rome he married Sabina. One 
chronicler represents him as spending large sums of money 
to win her, and so incurring the annoyance of Trajan ; 
another states that he turned with disdain from her plain 
propriety, and had to be persuaded by Plotina that the 
marriage was to his interest. It was, at all events, clearly 
a manage de convenance, and was destined to have the 
customary sequel. 

Sabina would be in her twelfth or thirteenth year at the 
time, and we can imagine the mating of the prim little 
maiden with the brilliant scholar and promising officer of 
twenty-four. For many years she is no more than the 
silent shadow of her husband, and we can only dimly 
follow her movements as she accompanies him about the 
Empire. Whether she accompanied him on the Dacian 
wars between loi and io6, or, as seems more probable, 
remained at Rome to develop a taste for letters in the 
palace of Plotina, we cannot confidently say, but it is 
recorded that she did lean to culture. Hadrian was back 
in io6, high in the favour of Trajan, who gave him the 
diamond ring he had received from Nerva. He could both 
fight and carouse to the Emperor's satisfaction. He was 
made praetor on his return, and gave brilliant games — at 
Trajan's expense — in which ii,ooo beasts were slain. In 
quick succession he became legate in Lower Pannonia 
and consul. The aged statesman Sura told him that 
he was destined for the throne; the rumour went about 
Rome, and the nobles, at first disdainful of his provincial 
accent and jealous of his progress, began to respect 
him. He, and most probably Sabina, accompanied Trajan 
on his fatal journey to the East, and we have seen what 
happened. 

In the year 117, in about the thirtieth year of her age, 



SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 151 

Sabina found herself Empress of Rome, but the elevation 
seems to have brought her little happiness and impelled 
her to no exertion. There is little room for doubt that, 
either in the camp or in the tainted atmosphere of Rome 
or Antioch, Hadrian had contracted the vice which prevailed 
among Roman men. There is another reason, however, 
why Sabina remains in obscurity in the chronicles. 
Hadrian's biographer, Gregorovius, has relieved him of the 
common charge that he relinquished the conquests of 
Trajan, and neglected Imperial interests, in a less enlight- 
ened zeal for art and letters, Hadrian had a clear, 
commendable, and vast policy. He believed that the 
Empire would only be weakened by extension, and that it 
was a saner ambition to enrich and uplift the life within its 
frontiers than to enlarge them. His life was spent in a 
magnificent realization of this design ; and it was a design 
so far beyond the modest range of Sabina's political 
intelligence that she was forced to remain a spectator of 
his work. She seems, very naturally, to have carped at his 
one frailty, which so nearly concerned her, and Hadrian 
replied peevishly, and merely conveyed her as an un- 
interested encumbrance in the remarkable voyages which 
fill the twenty years of his reign. 

Hadrian was then in his fortieth year, a tall, very 
handsome and athletic man, of brilliant conversation, un- 
tiring energy, and great public spirit. The most artistic 
of all Roman Emperors, one of the most artistic and 
cultured of monarchs, indeed, he could nevertheless endure 
the plain bread-and-cheese of the soldier for weeks to- 
gether; and he so much discarded his horse and his 
chariot, for their encouragement, that a chronicler de- 
scribes him as having covered the entire Empire on foot. 
By diplomacy and by bribes, which we may or may not 
admire, he secured an almost unbroken peace for the 
Empire during two decades ; and the works of use or 
adornment with which he enriched every province of the 
Empire during those twenty years make up an almost 
fabulous achievement. Much as we must sympathize with 



152 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the Empress in her resentment of the practice into which 
his Greek-Oriental tastes betrayed him, we cannot deny 
that Hadrian was a great and beneficent ruler. The 
sketch of his life in that prurient work, the " Historia 
Augusta " — the chronique scandaleuse of the middle Empire 
— is a monumental, if unconscious, panegyric. 

The biographer of the Empresses cannot escape the 
conclusion that Sabina was not a fitting mate for so 
versatile and constructive a genius. Her superiority in 
decency is enormously outweighed by Hadrian's magnifi- 
cent work for the Empire. The natural alienation of the 
two in sentiment would not encourage her to co-operate 
in his work, in the fashion set by Livia and Plotina, 
but one feels that this is not the sole explanation, and 
that her mediocre faculty was entirely absorbed in a 
small pursuit of culture. It is not impossible that, if 
there had been cordial co-operation between them, she 
would have saved Hadrian from the only serious stains 
on the record of his reign. 

The first of these occurred in the year following his 
accession. Bringing to the Imperial task a fresh and 
vigorous mind, untainted by mere military ambition — 
though he was an excellent soldier — Hadrian glanced 
round the Empire, and saw that peace must first be 
established on its frontiers. The East was aflame with 
revolt, the African and German boundaries were disturbed, 
and trouble was announced from Britain. He at once 
sacrificed the conquests beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, 
appeased the Jews and the other peoples of the East, and 
passed to Lower Germany to still the restlessness of the 
northern frontier. There had been some discontent among 
the older soldiers and statesmen of Rome at his being 
forced on them. From Judaea he had imprudently sent 
one of Trajan's most fiery commanders, the Moorish prince 
Lusius Quietus, back in some disgrace to the capital, and 
this man and others formed a party of opposition. When 
they saw that he was sacrificing Trajan's conquests and 
reversing his policy, and especially when he proposed to 



SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 153 

evacuate Dacia also, they entered, it is said, into something 
of the nature of a conspiracy. 

How far Hadrian was really responsible for the 
execution of the leaders of this party we cannot say, and 
his emphatic denial of responsibility is entitled to con- 
sideration. We know that, when the aged statesman 
Attianus wrote to urge him that the Roman prefect and 
other distinguished malcontents ought to be removed, 
he refused to take any action. The Senate now announced 
that a plot to assassinate Hadrian had been detected, and 
it put to death, without trial, four men of consular rank, 
Nigrinus, Palma, Celsus, and Lusius Quietus. A sullen 
murmur passed through the city, and Hadrian hastily 
composed his affairs on the Danube and went to Rome. 
He resolutely denied that he had consented to the execu- 
tions, and the question remains open. 

With this public resentment in view, Hadrian at once 
lavished the most princely favours on Rome, and swore 
that he would never execute a Senator without the consent 
of his order. He remitted debts to the treasury to the 
extent of ^^9,000,000, extended the existing charities to 
orphans and widows, provided magnificent spectacles for 
the people, and made a sacrifice of Attianus, by deposing 
him, to the anger of the malcontents. When the Senate 
offered him the triumph which had been due to Trajan 
for the Eastern victories, he refused it, and placed a wax 
image of the dead Emperor in the triumphal chariot. The 
citizens of Rome may have been less impressed when 
he showed a zeal for public morals, and forbade the mixed 
bathing that had hitherto been permitted ; but he suc- 
ceeded, by two years of untiring public service, in removing 
the earlier resentment. That he wished to kill Attianus, 
and did actually execute the architect Apollodorus, are 
idle legends. Serviez seriously reproduces the story that 
the architect had snubbed him — telling him to "go and 
paint his pumpkins " — when he had made a suggestion 
to him in earlier years, and that Hadrian avenged himself 
when he came to the throne. The truth is that the " Historia 



154 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Augusta " describes him in consultation with Apollodorus 
on some building project ten years later. 

The details of this vast activity of Hadrian's do not 
concern us, as Sabina seems to have taken no part in it. 
The busts we have of her seem to show a cold and irre- 
sponsive temper, as if the Empress were contemplating 
disdainfully the figure of the beautiful Oriental youth on 
whom Hadrian's affection became concentrated. There is 
distinction in the smooth lines of the face and in the lofty 
forehead, and there is a proud strength that might very 
well make her " morose and harsh," as Hadrian described 
her, when he gave her such palpable cause for resentment. 
Her mother died in 119. In a florid oration Hadrian 
praised her beauty of person and character, but the death 
would not be likely to improve the relations of the Imperial 
spouses. 

In the year 120 or 121 Hadrian set out on the first of 
the long journeys which fill the rest of his career, and 
Sabina made the tour of the world with him. Had their 
intercourse been more pleasant, the lot of Sabina during 
the next fifteen years would have been one of great fortune. 
They passed together over the whole Roman world from 
Eboracum (York) to Arabia and Egypt, surveying the 
ruined Empires of the past and the young nations of the 
future in the light of whatever culture the age afforded ; 
and so beneficent was their passage that myriads of in- 
scriptions and coins, bearing such legends as " Golden 
Age " and " Restorer of the Earth," handed on to posterity 
the memory of the great works which Hadrian everywhere 
inaugurated. Through Gaul — probably through the flour- 
ishing Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles), the soHd and 
cultured city of Lugdunum (Lyons), and the little trading 
centre, Lutetia, that would one day be brilliant Paris — 
they passed on to Germany, and traversed the boundless 
forests that hid the soil of a great modern nation. No 
glittering pomp of guards surrounded the Emperor. Bare- 
headed alike in the snows of Germany and under the 
sun of Syria, marching commonly on foot in the dress of 




SABINA 

BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 



SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 155 

a soldier, and living on soldier's fare, he restored the rigid 
discipline of the legions wherever he went. Bridges, 
aqueducts, roads, temples, and colonnaded squares sprang 
up in the rear of his march. His staff was a band of 
engineers and architects. 

In this novel and admirable company Sabina made the 
round of Gaul and Germany, and crossed over to Britain 
in the Imperial galleys. From the little colony of Lon- 
dinium (London), which had been destroyed sixty years 
before, and was now restored by Hadrian, they passed 
along the solid Roman road to Eboracum (York), the last 
great station from which civilization looked out on the 
turbulent waves of Scottish barbarism. It was then that 
Hadrian ordered the building of the great wall, to keep 
off the Caledonian marauders, of which the traces still 
exist. Sabina may have remained in York while Hadrian 
surveyed the rough territory to the north, and it seems 
to have been on the Emperor's return that an episode 
occurred which must have greatly embittered her. 

One of Hadrian's secretaries was the historian Suetonius, 
whose work on the Emperors has provided us with much 
material. With him and the cultivated commander of the 
Praetorian Guards Sabina maintained a close friendship, 
and Hadrian made a grievance of it. So closely did he 
pry into the affairs of his friends that the rumour was set 
about that he had many mistresses among their wives. 
It was reported to him that Suetonius and Septicius Clarus 
" were behaving with more familiarity than the dignity of 
the Imperial house permitted," as Spartianus puts it, and 
they were dismissed. There is no suggestion of grave 
irregularity on her part. The idea of divorcing Sabina, 
which Hadrian is said to have discussed, is expressly 
connected with what he called her "moroseness and 
asperity " ; and we can well believe that her asperity took 
the form of bitter complaints about his own conduct. 
Nothing further was done, and, though we may regard 
with reserve the statement that Sabina deliberately pre- 
vented herself from having a child, lest she should put a 



1 56 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

new monster on the throne, the Imperial couple continued 
their uncongenial companionship.^ Some of the coins 
which were struck in commemoration of their passage 
ventured to bear the legend, " Concordia Augusta " — struck 
in honour of the harmony of the Imperial household. 

From Britain they returned to Gaul, where Hadrian 
excited comment by the opulence of his mourning over 
the death of Plotina. They then passed to Spain, where 
Roman civilization had taken deep root, and on to the 
land of the Moors. The colonies which Rome had planted 
along the strip of territory descending from the mountains 
to the sea had been devastated by the barbarians, and the 
frontier had been obliterated. Hadrian drove back the 
tribes, restored the towns, and returned, after an absence 
of more than a year, to Rome. The city was tranquil, and 
the building of the great villa which still, in its ruins, 
excites the amazement of the visitor at Tivoli, was pro- 
ceeding. After a year or two of peaceful administration, 
seeing that the west, north, and south of the Empire were 
secure and prospering, Hadrian turned his face towards 
the east. 

We need not follow him in this journey to Greece and 
Asia Minor, since it is not clear whether Sabina accom- 
panied him, but it had a sequel of melancholy interest to 
the Empress. From the cities of Greece he made his way 
along the coast of the Black Sea to the region of the 
Parthians, where he again restored peace, and back 
through Asia Minor and the islands to Rome. Two or 
three years had been occupied in this journey, and 
Hadrian had become less Roman in taste than ever. 
He came home surrounded by Greeks, and with a great 

* Gregorovius points out that the incident may have occurred at Rome, 
and that we have no positive proof that Sabina accompanied him on this 
journey. But the narrative of Spartianus seems to imply that she was in 
Britain, and we shall see that she accompanied him on his longer journey 
to the East. Duruy and other writers hold that the officers were dismissed 
for lack, not excess, of respect for Sabina, but the word " familiarius," 
coupled with a threat of divorce, seems to demand the interpretation I have 
put on it. 



SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 157 

zeal for Greek and Eastern institutions. In particular he 
brought in his train a beautiful Bithynian youth whose 
name is from that time inseparably connected with his. 
Hadrian's passion for Antinous is the chief stain on his 
character, and was probably the chief ground of Sabina's 
resentment. The Emperor had visited Bithynia, and pre- 
sumably met the youth there. Every traveller among 
rude and healthy nations is aware that such practices are 
by no means confined to decadent civilizations, nor does 
the student of contemporary morals see in them anything 
distinctive of the life of ancient Syria, Greece, or Rome. 
Nevertheless, the remarkable beauty of Antinous, which is 
familiar to us in many a statue, and the wanton openness 
of his association with the Emperor, attracted general 
attention and greatly embittered Sabina. 

When, therefore, she set out with Hadrian, at the end 
of 128 or the beginning of 129, for a fresh and more exten- 
sive tour in the East, her enjoyment must have been 
heavily clouded by the daily and hourly presence of the 
Emperor's companions. The young Adonis was not the 
only source of offence in Hadrian's suite. Closer still to 
Hadrian was a young Roman noble of the most effemi- 
nate charm and the most dissolute life. Lucius Ceionius 
Commodus was later taken into Imperial partnership by 
Hadrian, and, although he did not live to attain supreme 
power, his descendants will more than once enter and 
disturb our story of the Empresses. Spartianus ascribes 
to him a "regal beauty" of face and person, a manner 
of great charm, a witty and sparkling conversation, and 
an utter depravity of morals. He had won the regard of 
Hadrian, not so much by the famous new dish which he 
had invented for the epicures of Rome — a boar, ham, 
pheasant, and peacock pie — as by the sensuous charm of 
his person and the exotic sensuality of his life. He would 
lie, washed in exquisite Persian ointments, on a couch 
strewn with roses, with a coverlet of lilies drawn over 
himself and his companion. Such ways were entirely 
foreign to the nature of Hadrian, but his robust vigour 



158 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

was singularly united with a fine artistic sensibility and 
a love of the softer east, which led him into many 
inconsistencies. 

Sabina had for companion a Greek poetess, Julia 
Fadilla, of such virtue and attainments that a statue was 
somewhere raised to honour her as a pattern of integrity. 
The incongruous party, with its conflicting groups of virtue 
and vice — a fitting symbol of the unhappy union of West 
and East — crossed the sea to Athens, and then visited 
Corinth, Eleusis, and the other surviving cities of Greece, 
The frame of that superb civilization still gleamed, almost 
intact, on the soil of Hellas, though the soul of Greece had 
departed. It was as if one gazed on the smooth white 
corpse of a beautiful woman. Groups of sophists still 
disputed in the gardens or under the shady colonnades ; 
but they were puny mimics of Socrates, Zeno, and 
Epicurus. Politicians still babbled in the Agora ; but 
they blessed the hand of Rome that had closed brutally 
on the throat of their fair country. The Acropolis still 
shone in its panoply of Parian marble, and Hadrian had 
restored the harbour and repaired many of the ravages 
of time and violence. He regretted the greed of his fore- 
runners, and sought to restore the ancient spirit. But 
the poor revival of art and letters and religion, which he 
succeeded in effecting, was only the last flicker of the 
vitality of Greece. 

They crossed the sea to Ephesus, which at that time 
rivalled Antioch and Alexandria as a metropolis of the 
decaying civilizations of the East. Its great Temple of 
Diana, a teeming store of art and treasure, drew men 
from all parts, while priests of all religions mingled in its 
streets with panders to all vices and ministers to every 
form of art and luxury. Smyrna, another flourishing city 
of Asia Minor, attracted them next, with its magnificent 
assemblage of temples, colonnades, baths, and theatres, 
and they passed on to Sardis and the other cities of that 
fascinating and repellent Greek-Oriental region, where 
new mysticism ran like veins of gold in the old volcanic 



SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 159 

deposits. The winter was spent in the luxury of Ephesus 
and Smyrna, and with the spring they traversed the 
successive provinces of Asia Minor, admiring and restoring 
the remains of Greek and Persian grandeur. Through 
Syria, where famous Antioch detained them for a time, 
they went on, probably, to the ruined cities of Tyre and 
Sidon, and returned to Heliopolis, Damascus, and Palmyra. 
In Palestine they found the survivors of the scattered 
Jewish nation living in great poverty and dejection among 
the ruins of their cities, or still scrutinizing the prophets 
and looking for the Messiah in the larger communities on 
the coast. On the site of Jerusalem, where a few broken 
towers gave a melancholy reminder of their former pros- 
perity, Hadrian ordered that a new Roman colony should 
be established. 

From Judaea they moved to Arabia, and then to Egypt. 
Alexandria was then the second city of the world in 
importance, the first in interest. All the exhausted streams 
of the older civilizations had poured into it. Never before 
or since was there so cosmopolitan a population, such a 
gathering of old vices and new moralities, dead religions 
and fresh religions, cults six thousand years old and the 
latest gospels of Judaea and Persia. Its harbour still held 
the ships of every port in the Mediterranean, its Serapeum, 
Museum, and Caesareum sheltered the art and culture of 
the world, and its deafening streets rang with the tongues 
of the world. But the soul of Egypt, too, was dead, and 
the Imperial party moved up the Nile to admire the 
surviving relics of its past. No doubt priests and learned 
men from Alexandria would attend as interpreters. They 
wandered in Memphis, which the sand of the desert was 
beginning to bury, passed through Heliopolis, and reached 
Besa, where they experienced the great sensation of the 
tour. The beautiful Bithynian youth was drowned in the 
Nile, and Sabina had to regard with disdain the womanly 
tears and the extravagant mourning of the Emperor, It 
is not clear to this day whether the death was accidental or 
voluntary. Hadrian, of course, said that it was accidental ; 



i6o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

but a rumour lingers in the chronicles that the Emperor, 
in his new zeal for Oriental superstition, had learned that 
his life was doomed unless some loved being was sacrificed 
for him, and Antinous offered himself Hadrian has taken 
the secret with him, but the temples and statues he raised 
all over the Empire kept the memory of the pretty youth 
fresh for centuries. 

This occurred about the month of October. The dates 
of these journeys of Hadrian are much disputed, but a 
trivial detail has determined this part of the tour. They 
went on to Thebes, and, in accordance with custom, cut 
their names and the date in the great statue of Memnon. 
They probably pushed on as far as Philse, to see the 
temple of Isis, but we find them back in Syria at the 
end of the year, or the beginning of 132, and soon after- 
wards in Rome. The great villa had now been completed 
at Tivoli, and we must assume that Sabina lived there 
during the three or four years that remained for her.' 
They were years of continued melancholy. Hadrian was 
sobered, but soured. The Jews had disturbed his cherished 
peace by rebelling, on account of his design to cover the 
site of their holy city with a Roman colony, and he had 
ruthlessly destroyed what remained of their cities, and 
erased the name of Jerusalem by calling the new town 
iElia Capitolina. Illness began to enfeeble his frame, 
and he brooded darkly over the question of a successor, 
which men were discussing. He passed in heavy dejection 
through the lovely gardens and marble temples of his 
villa, still mourning the loss of Antinous, An obelisk 
has been found there with the inscription that it was 
raised to the youth by Hadrian and Sabina — a fiction 
that must have angered the Empress, if it were done 
before her death. But she did not live to see the darker 
gloom of his closing years. She died in, or about, the 
year 136, "not without a rumour of poison," says 
Spartianus; the rumour is not worth considering. She 
had been entitled "Augusta" by the Senate in 127, but 
Hadrian refused her the divine honours which were 



SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN i6i 

usually bestowed on dead Empresses. They were awarded 
by his successor. 

The busts of Sabina which we have suggest just such a 
personality as we have gathered from the meagre references 
to her in the chronicles. She was a woman of smooth and 
regular features and fine person, without beauty or charm. 
Her face gives an impression of intellect, virtue, and silent 
suffering. She is the kind of woman who would neither 
overlook the vice of her husband nor actively resent it, 
or assert herself in any way ; the kind of woman to 
retreat in disdain to her books. That she was ** treated 
as a slave " by Hadrian, as Aurelius Victor says, we may 
decline to believe, and regard the statement as a popular 
exaggeration ; nor, on the other hand, can we agree with 
Gregorovius that a letter in which Hadrian invites his 
mother to dine with him on his birthday, and says that 
Sabina has gone into the country, shows their " mutual 
dislike." Duruy quotes this very letter in disproof of 
the belief that they were estranged, and points out that 
it goes on to say that Sabina had " sent her share for the 
family dinner." The French historian believes that the 
legend, " Concordia Augusta," on some of the medals of 
the time expressed a fact. We cannot, however, imagine 
Sabina resigning herself to her husband's passion for 
3^ouths, and the few authentic details left us about her 
relations with Hadrian generally indicate a mutual aversion. 
As an Empress, she was a nonentity; as a woman, an 
admirable blend of old-world sobriety and new-world 
culture. 

Hadrian survived her for two unhappy years. The 
whole Empire was covered with monuments of his public 
service, the coinage of every province proclaimed his 
beneficence, the slave, the widow, and the orphan gratefully 
told of his magnanimity. But the illness and depression of 
his last year permitted him to commit a crime, and, so 
accustomed was the new generation to good conduct in its 
rulers, the recollection of his great deeds was almost 
obliterated. To the astonishment of all, and the indigna- 
II 



l62 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

tion of the thoughtful, Hadrian announced that he had 
chosen as Caesar his dissolute and decadent companion, 
Lucius Verus. His brother-in-law Servianus, now an old 
man of ninety, and the grandson of Servianus, a youth 
of nineteen, seem to have been among the murmurers, and, 
on trivial pretexts, they were put to death. These cruel 
murders brought a deep shadow over Hadrian's last year, 
but a last opportunity was given him to repair his action. 
Lucius Verus, worn and consumptive from debauch, died, 
and Hadrian now made choice of the most worthy man in 
the Senate, Titus Antoninus ; adding, however, in his quaint 
way of mingling good and evil, that he must in turn adopt 
the son of Lucius Verus and young Marcus Aurelius, a 
Sybarite and a Stoic, two antithetic types of Roman life. 
He went down to Baiae, suffering acutely from dropsy. 
The pain and weariness were so great that he tried to 
secure poison or a sword, but Antoninus prudently 
guarded and nursed him. He died in the year 138, "done 
to death by physicians," he ironically said. In his last 
days he composed some slight verses, which I may 
translate : 

Little soul, so tired and still, 
Guest of this decaying flesh, 
Whither, now, will thy flight be ? 
Pale and cold and reft of speech, 
Never more to utter joke. 

It was the note of the time-spirit, which was so strangely 
incarnated in Hadrian. He united in his person all the 
contradictions that were at strife in his era of change — 
asceticism and sensuality, public spirit and selfish sensi- 
bility. Stoicism and Cyrenaicism. He needed a stronger 
Empress. But the better spirit prevailed in him at the end, 
and the Stoics came to the throne. 



CHAPTER X 

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 

ON the twenty-fifth of February, in the year 138, 
Hadrian had summoned the Senators to the palace, 
Verus was dead, and the whole world wondered on 
whom the erratic fancy of the ailing Emperor would rest 
next. Among the Senators was a distinguished, able, and 
amiable statesman and commander, Titus Aurelius Fulvus 
Boionius Arrius Antoninus, whose great merit had — as the 
long series of names implies — been richly rewarded by 
older relatives. He had been much consulted by Hadrian 
in his last years, and was respected by all. To the great 
relief of the Senate the wavering finger of the Emperor fell 
on this man, and he was acclaimed Caesar. He attended 
Hadrian devotedly, prolonged the useless life which 
lingered between him and the throne, and — it was rumoured 
— saved many a noble head from execution in the last 
frenzies of Hadrian. Early in July that great traveller set 
out on his last journey, and Aurelius Antoninus — a name 
to which the Senate soon added the appellation of Pius — 
ascended the throne. 

The new Empress of Rome was Annia Galeria Faustina, 
a matron in her thirty-fourth year, of an ancient and dis- 
tinguished Italian family. It is of some interest to regard 
the extraction of Faustina. Through her the Imperial 
throne is about to pass once more to one of its most ignoble 
occupants, and Rome will sink rapidly from the reign of 
Marcus AureHus to the riot of Commodus. The two 
opposing tendencies of Roman life meet in her family, and 

163 



i64 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the Stoic succumbs to the Epicurean — or, rather, to the 
Sybaritic or Cyrenaic, for the gospel of Epicurus was one 
of dignity and sobriety. Rome might have said, in the 
later language of Goethe, as he depicted himself passing 
through a similar phase : 

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust. 

One soul leaned to sloth, sensual and selfish indulgence : 
one, with larger horizon, was for temperance, vigour, and 
Imperial duty. The curious feature of this critical stage in 
the fortunes of Rome is that the two tendencies are 
developed within the same family, and the Stoic yields to 
the Sybarite, Annia Galeria Faustina was born of the same 
parents as the father of Marcus Aurelius, and was reared 
in the same atmosphere of old Roman virtue, or manliness, 
as the word signifies. The great-grandfather of Marcus 
Aurelius was Annius Verus, a Senator of great merit and 
of Spanish extraction. His son Annius Verus was twice 
consul, and both his sons in turn — the father and uncle of 
Marcus Aurelius — were promoted to the consulate. Every- 
thing we know of the family suggests a fine and sober 
patrician type, and confirms the beautiful picture of it given 
us by Marcus Aurelius in his " Meditations." 

The one element of possible weakness in the ancestry of 
the Faustinas and of Commodus is in the mother of Annia 
Galeria Faustina. Annius Verus had married Rupilia 
Faustina. Her family is obscure, and, though one must 
hesitate to trace to her this strain of weakness and vice on 
such slender grounds, one is disposed to believe that she 
was married for her beauty, and brought into that strong 
family the tainted germ which ripened in more than one of 
her descendants. It may, however, very well be that the 
strength of the stock was decaying — Marcus Aurelius him- 
self was delicate — and its later descendants succumbed to 
the evil influences about them. A genealogical table will 
show how the fate of Rome hung on this family for more 
than a generation : — 




FAUSTINA THE ELDER 

BUST IN THE LOUVRE 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 165 

Annius Verus (twice consul) 
and Rupilia Faustina 



Annius Libo Annius Verus (consul) Annia Galeria Faustina 

(consul) (marries Domitia Calvilla) (marries Antoninus Pius) 



Annia Cornificia Marcus Aurelius Annia Faustina 

(marries Annia Faustina) / 

[ 
Commodus 

Faustina had inherited her mother's beauty, and was 
reared in a very conscientious home. It was the home in 
which Marcus Aurelius learned his first lessons in virtue, 
as liis father died early, and all the chroniclers speak of it 
with great respect. We know very little about her, how- 
ever, until she becomes Empress, and, as she died three 
years afterwards, we have not much concern with her. 
She is believed to have married somewhat late for a Roman 
girl, in or about her sixteenth year (120). Titus Aurelius 
Antoninus was then in his thirty-fourth year, a tall, grace- 
ful, and handsome man, of quiet and captivating manners, 
good cultivation, fine character, and a face of great dignity 
and sweetness. He was of good family, and was advancing 
rapidly in the public service. Shortly after the marriage 
he became consul, and he remained in Rome in one or 
other civic capacity until 128 or 129. He was very wealthy 
and greatly esteemed. 

One of the chroniclers has charged her with light 
behaviour, and, as this is the only period in which we can 
plausibly entertain it, we may regard the charge for a 
moment. The book of Dio's history for the reign of 
Antoninus Pius is lost, so that neither he nor his com- 
mentato. s throw any light on Faustina. Aurelius Victor 
and Eutropius say nothing of her character. The one 
hostile witness is "Julius Capitolinus," the anonymous 
.writer of the fourth century who provides the sketch of the 



i66 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

life of Antoninus Pius in the ** Historia Augusta." He 
says (c, 3): "Many things are said of his wife's excessive 
freedom and looseness of life, which he had painfully to 
overlook." Serviez enlarges on this with his usual license. 
But as he makes Faustina the sister of .^lius Verus, and 
says that she neglected the education of her children, which 
is also untrue, we may ignore him. 

It is now more customary to reject this charge against 
the elder Faustina, on the ground that the single witness is 
a light anecdotist of the fourth century. Moreover, when 
the tutor Fronto wrote a glowing panegyric of Faustina 
after her death, Antoninus Pius answered that it was even 
more true than eloquent, and swore that he " would rather 
live with her at Gyaros [a barren island, to which criminals 
were deported] than in a palace without her." Neverthe- 
less, we must leave the question open. Antoninus Pius 
was not a puritan. When the Emperor Julian introduces 
him before the gods, in his "charming contest of the 
Emperors for the highest praise ('* The Caesars "), he calls 
him "a moderate man, not indeed in love-affairs, but in the 
administration of the Empire." Faustina was probably 
charming enough to merit his sincere lament. But as 
Capitolinus mingles truth and untruth with a very light 
hand, and the relevant book of Dio is wanting, we cannot 
decide the issue. 

In the year 128 or 129 Antoninus was appointed Pro- 
consul of Asia, and he and Faustina went to Smyrna. The 
elder of their two daughters died about the same time. An 
amusing incident in connexion with their arrival is 
narrated by Philostratus in his " Lives of the Sophists." The 
Proconsul at once occupied the finest house in Smyrna, 
the home of the teacher Polemo, who was absent. Polemo 
was the idol of Smyrna, and was proportionately conceited. 
He drew youths from all parts to his school, and had won 
much favour from Hadrian for the city. He travelled in a 
superb Phrygian chariot, and his mules had silver trap- 
pings ; and when some grumblers had hinted that he had 
diverted to his own pocket some of Hadrian's subsidies, he 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 167 

had pompously written to the Emperor : " Polemo has 
given me an account of money given by you to him." This 
conceited sophist reached his house in the middle of the 
night, and found the Proconsul and Faustina abed there. 
He promptly turned them out, and roundly abused them. 
Years afterwards, when the genial Antoninus was Em- 
peror, and Polemo came to the palace, he said laughingly 
to an attendant : " See that Polemo has a chamber in the 
palace, and that no one turns him out." Later an actor 
came from Smyrna to complain that Polemo, the autocrat, 
had turned him out of the theatre. "At what hour?" 
asked the Emperor gravely. It was at midday. " That is 
nothing ; he turned me out at midnight," said the Emperor. 
The amiability and solid work of Antoninus must have 
won Polemo, as Hadrian is reported to have said in his will 
that it was he who advised the adoption of Antoninus. But 
the East generally so much appreciated the Proconsul that, 
when he returned to Rome, he stood very high in the 
favour of Hadrian. We again lose sight of Faustina until 
he becomes Emperor, and then there are one or two brief 
references to her before she dies in 141. At his accession 
he refused the greater part of the money {aurum coronariuin) 
which was due to him, by custom, from the provinces, and 
drew very liberally on his private fortune for paying the 
great expenses entailed. Faustina naturally demurred. 
"Foolish woman," he is said to have answered, " when we 
obtained the Empire we lost what we previously pos- 
sessed." The only other reference is contained in a letter 
of the younger Faustina to Marcus Aurelius : " In the 
defection of Celsus my mother exhorted Antoninus to be 
concerned first about his own family." We know nothing 
of this revolt. Apparently Antoninus, like Marcus Aurelius, 
was disposed to be dangerously lenient. The final refer- 
ence to Faustina is that she died in the third year of his 
reign (141), and was deeply mourned by him. Nominated 
" Augusta " in life, she was deified at death, and Antoninus 
built in her honour the beautiful temple of which traces are 
still seen in Rome. He also instituted in her honour a 



1 68 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

fresh charity for orphans, the " Puellae Faustinianae," and 
ordered that gold and silver statues of her should be borne 
in the processions. 

This sincere tribute of the Emperor tells at least of a 
great affection and esteem, but the literary references to 
Faustina are too meagre and disputable to bring her clearly 
before us. The busts that are believed to represent her 
do not, unfortunately, assist us much. In the Capitoline 
Museum at Rome is one that may depict her in her 
twenties or earlier. It has a round and tranquil face, not 
devoid of strength, but more directly suggesting an even 
and sober character. Another bust, in the Vatican 
Museum, shows the same features at a later age ; but a 
third, in the same Museum, has not so pleasant an expres- 
sion. The oval face is hard and querulous. The loose 
lips droop at the ends; the large eyes, prominent cheek- 
bones, and strong chin have an expression that is very 
far from tender or spiritual. The bust that is attributed 
to her in the British Museum is between the two. The 
elder Faustina remains in obscurity, and we pass to her 
more notorious daughter and successor. 

For twenty years after the death of Faustina there 
was no Empress of Rome. Antoninus, who was in his 
fifty-fifth year, refused to marry again, and took a concu- 
bine — an arrangement recognized in Roman law and 
practice, in which marriage had several degrees. It was 
an era of general peace and great prosperity. The group 
of Stoic lawyers that the Emperor gathered about him 
humanely moderated the rigour of the laws, medical 
service was supplied to the poor in the towns, the school- 
system was further endowed, and works of mercy con- 
tinued to multiply. The armies usually rested — and, it 
is to be feared, rusted — the treasury was again filled, the 
Empire was happy and prosperous. In the year i6i the 
cheerful, benevolent Antoninus passed away, and the two 
men whom Hadrian had compelled him to adopt came to 
their joint reign. With them are introduced two new 
Empresses of no little interest, 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 169 

The two boys whom Hadrian had lightly designated as 
the heirs to the throne after Antoninus were Annius Verus, 
or Verissimus, as Hadrian genially called him on account 
of his precocious gravity and piety, and Lucius Verus, son 
of Hadrian's dissolute companion. Annius was a great 
favourite of the Emperor. He received office in his sixth 
year, and donned the philosopher's cloak in his twelfth. 
He was the pet of his grandfather's palace, but so serious 
in his Stoicism that his mother had difficulty in persuading 
him to sleep in a bed instead of on the floor. In his sixteenth 
year Hadrian gave him the manly toga, and betrothed him 
to the daughter of Lucius Verus. In his eighteenth year 
he was " terrified " to hear that he had been chosen for the 
succession, and must go to live in the palace. Then Hadrian 
died, and Antoninus adopted him. 

Gibbon has greatly praised Antoninus for preferring 
the welfare of the State to the interest of his family in this 
adoption. It is true that, as we know from coins, Antoninus 
and Faustina had had two sons, as well as two daughters, 
but they must have died before the year 138. Dio expressly 
says that Hadrian ordered Antoninus to adopt the two 
youths "because he had no male children at the time." 
His boys, like his elder daughter, must have died before 
that time ; and indeed we have no further mention of them. 
But if this particular grace cannot be allowed to Antoninus, 
we must admire his careful control of their education and 
his discriminating guidance of their fortunes. The best 
masters in Rome instructed each of them, and it was 
only the deep-rooted difference in their constitutions — the 
moral strength of the one and weakness of the other — that 
led them to diverge so widely. The vigilant eye of the 
Emperor observed the dissimilarity of promise. He left 
Lucius Verus out of the way of promotion, and destined 
Marcus for the great advancement. 

No sooner was Antoninus on the throne than he 
approached Marcus, through Faustina, with a proposal 
of marriage with his daughter. She had been promised 
by Hadrian to young Lucius Verus, and Marcus was to 



170 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

marry Ceionia. The Emperor proposed to cancel these 
contracts, and marry the younger Faustina to the young 
Stoic. It would be extremely interesting if we could 
penetrate the feelings of the young princess at the time. 
The later busts of her suggest a pretty, round-faced girl, 
probably in her early teens, with small eyes and a lively 
temperament. The grim and austere young scholar would 
not attract her, and one can imagine her feelings when he 
asked time to consider whether he would accept the hand 
of the Emperor's charming daughter. Marcus philosophic- 
ally weighed the proposal in his mind until the time he 
asked had expired, and then he consented to betrothal. 
He was appointed Caesar and consul designate, and given 
the palace of Tiberius for a dwelling. A bust that we have 
of him, in the Capitol Museum, represents him about this 
time — a face of singular beauty and refinement framed in 
a mass of short curly hair. 

Their marriage — a superb ceremony — did not take place 
until about seven years later (145), a circumstance which 
we may regard as a further philosophic error. During the 
years of waiting, and during most of the reign of Antoninus, 
Marcus was absorbed in study. He was penetrated with 
the aphorism of Plato, that the State would be happy whose 
prince was a philosopher. What the effect was on Faustina 
we may be in a better position to say later. Her mother 
had died in 141, her womanhood was fully born, and the eye 
of her father had an Empire to survey. At the death of 
Antoninus the throne was at once offered to Marcus. 1 n 
his last moments Antoninus had ordered the golden statue 
of Fortune, which he kept in his chamber, to be conveyed 
to Marcus. From a sense of duty he, unluckily for Rome, 
associated Lucius Verus with him in the Empire. Some- 
what delicate himself, he relied on Verus for such work 
abroad as was immediately necessary, and continued to 
frequent the schools. 

His peaceful studies were quickly interrupted. Fatal 
floods and scarcity of food disturbed the capital ; the eastern 
frontier was again aflame, and the Qerman frontier was 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 171 

threatened. Marcus sent Verus to take command in the 
East, after betrothing him to his daughter Lucilla, held off 
the northern barbarians with bribes and diplomacy, and 
worked hard for the relief of Rome. For a time his policy 
seemed to triumph. The Germans were pacified, and the 
eastern peoples repressed. Verus, indeed, advanced no 
farther than the voluptuous palaces of Antioch and the 
licentious groves of Daphne. Once only during the cam- 
paign did he quit the luxury of Antioch. He heard that 
Marcus was coming East with his daughter Lucilla, and 
hastened to meet him otherwhere than in garrulous Antioch. 
Marcus did not leave Italy, however, and Verus wedded 
Lucilla, and returned to his perfumed vices. Happily, there 
was in the East a Roman general of the old stamp, Avidius 
Cassius, a strong and blunt man, disdainful of luxury. He 
lashed the debauched troops into a state of discipline, 
pacified the East, and let Verus return to Rome to enjoy his 
triumph. 

Here begin the stories that have gathered about the 
memory of the younger Faustina, and have persuaded 
many a writer that, as one of the authorities says, she 
became a second Messalina. If we are to believe the 
" Augustan History," she behaved with the most abominable 
license throughout her whole married life. Four Roman 
nobles are specifically named as notorious lovers of the 
Empress, and she is charged with general license. One 
of the four was named Tertullus, and it is said that one 
day, when Marcus was in the theatre, an actor made flagrant 
reference to this liaison. Asked for the name of a certain 
lover, he said three times {ter\ " Tullus, TuUus, Tullus." 
It is added that Marcus — who might very well miss a point 
in the theatre, as he read and wrote letters there — was 
quite aware of the liaison, because he one day surprised 
Faustina at breakfast with Tertullus. The Empress is 
further charged with adultery with the voluptuous 
colleague of her husband, and with wantoning among 
actors, gladiators, sailors, and others of the baser sort. 

The more sober writers on Faustina have generally 



172 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

been unwilling to admit this debauchery. Duruy rejects 
the stories altogether, Merivale recommends reserve, and 
Renan thinks that " careful research has reduced to very 
small proportions the accusations which scandal was 
pleased to bring against the wife of Marcus Aurelius." It 
seems to me that we can only come to the same conclusion 
as we did in regard to Messalina ; we must regard par- 
ticular legends with reserve, but must conclude that the 
general opinion of Faustina at the time, which the stories 
embody, must have had a serious basis. Some of the 
stories put on record by Capitolinus in the " Augustan 
History " are palpably false. One runs that she confessed 
to Marcus her passion for a certain gladiator, and that 
Marcus was directed by the Chaldaean sages, whom he 
consulted, to kill the man and bathe the Empress in his 
blood. Her passion was cured, but her next child was the 
brutal Commodus. This story is so gross — I do not 
reproduce all the details — that the writer does not insist on 
it, but he continues : " Still, as her conduct with the gladia- 
tors is well known, Commodus probably was the son of a 
gladiator." Now the tutor of the princes, Fronto, remarks 
in one of his letters, and the surviving busts bear him out, 
that Commodus had a striking likeness to Marcus Aurelius. 
I may add that Commodus was born in the year of the 
Emperor's accession, when such conduct is incredible. 

Other parts of the legend are just as vulnerable. Thus 
it is said that Faustina poisoned Verus when he boasted 
to his wife of his relations with her. He died a very 
natural death, as we shall see later. On the other hand, 
Dio, who lived shortly afterwards, and had no dislike for 
scandal, knows nothing whatever about this looseness on 
the part of the Empress, and there is nothing in Eutropius 
or Aurelius Victor. The only other writer who, in a 
general way, accuses Faustina of dissoluteness is the 
Emperor Julian (" Caesars," c. 28). We are therefore in a 
dilemma, and must not too readily speak of Faustina as 
a second Messalina. The quiet assumption of her guilt 
in Julian, and the fact that the stories in the "Augustan 




FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER 

BUST (reputed) in THE BRITISH MUSEUH 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 173 

History " are professedly taken from Marius Maximus, an 
historical writer not far removed from her time, imply a 
very general belief in her guilt. In one place Capitolinus 
says (c. 23) that the Emperor " cleared her by his letters" 
of the charge of loose behaviour with actors, and in another 
represents him as saying, when he is urged to divorce her 
on account of her vices : " If we send away the wife, we 
must give up her dowry," though the Empire could hardly 
be called Faustina's dowry. In a third place, however, 
Capitolinus leaves it open whether Marcus " was ignorant 
of, or ignored," his wife's misconduct. For many writers, 
in fact, the attitude of Marcus is decisive. If such things 
had been done he must have known, and, with such 
knowledge, he could not have spoken so highly of his wife 
in his "Meditations," and would not have dared to set up, 
in her memory, an altar on which the maidens of Rome 
should offer sacrifice before marriage. 

The scale, in truth, is somewhat evenly balanced, yet 
one cannot easily conceive that the heavy charges of 
Marius Maximus and the deliberate verdict of Julian had 
no foundation. Whether from weakness, or from an excess 
of casuistry, Marcus Aurelius lacked decision or penetra- 
tion in such matters. He married his daughter to a 
profligate, whom he afterwards deified, and he committed 
the Empire to a son who had given early promise of vice. 
His grave and ascetic ways probably repelled the gay and 
beautiful woman whom he had diplomatically married, and 
she seems to have sought relief. None of the busts, 
medallions, or coins, which more or less convey an image 
of her to us, suggest character or culture, but rather a 
weak control and a sensuous temper. From her Com- 
modus derived the enfeebled will that put him at the 
mercy of his more dissolute courtiers, and the sensuality 
that made his short reign an indescribable debauch. Much 
as we should like to relieve Marcus Aurelius of the shame 
of having begotten such a monster, we must admit his 
parentage, and cast what blame there is on the mother. 

In this unsatisfactory haze we must leave the conduct 



174 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

of the Empress during the years in which her husband 
wrought for the safety of the Empire, bequeathed his 
austere reflections to later ages, or contemplated the 
golden images of his teachers in his lararium. The 
triumphant return of Verus was quickly followed by years 
of gravest anxiety. In the pestilential East the legions 
had absorbed the germs of plague, had strewn them along 
their route, and had now disseminated them throughout 
Rome. Thousands of victims, rich and poor, succumbed 
to the subtle malady. Marcus vainly summoned the 
ministers of every religion and the medical men of all 
schools, and sacrificed those obscure Christians on whom 
popular anger was ever ready to visit a calamity. His 
trouble increased when it was announced that the fierce 
Marcomanni of the north had burst into the Empire, and 
were driving the Romans before them. With great energy 
he mustered the demoralized legions in the north, and 
set out with Verus against the enemy. In the middle 
of the war (i68) Verus, who had repeatedly tried to return 
to the comfort of the capital, died. He had an apoplectic 
fit on the journey, and we may ignore the various sug- 
gestions that either Lucilla, or Faustina, or Marcus put 
an end to his useless career. 

Marcus continued for several years the task of settling 
the frontier tribes. It seems that Faustina went with him 
on these arduous campaigns, though whether we may 
see in the circumstance any merit on her part, or a device 
of the Emperor to control her conduct, it is impossible 
to say. She at least earned a title — '* Mother of the 
Camps " and " Mother of the Legions " — which is found 
on few coins of the Empresses. It is probable that her 
disorders belonged to an earlier date, before and in the 
early part of the Emperor's reign. It is chiefly at Gaeta, 
the pretty bay on the coast where many Romans had 
villas, that Capitolinus places her familiarity with gladiators 
and sailors. Possibly the sobriety of her later years was 
accepted by her husband as an expiation, and held to 
justify his eulogy of her. 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 175 

Those later 3'ears were full of trouble and anxiety. 
Not only did two of their children die, and their daughter 
Lucilla become the widow of a notorious profligate, but 
the gods seemed to have entered upon a contest with the 
virtue of Marcus Aurelius. A great earthquake shook 
the East, the plague left a blackened trail over the Empire 
and infested the camps, and other disasters were crowded 
into a few years. The treasury ran short, and Marcus 
was obliged to put up the Imperial treasures at auction 
to obtain funds for carrying on the war. His one con- 
solation was that the Eastern frontier was tranquil, yet 
in the year 175 a messenger came to announce that his 
great general, Avidius Cassius, was in revolt, and claimed 
the Empire, 

Verus, who must have felt the scorn of the stronger 
man, had warned Marcus years before that Cassius was 
dangerous, but the actual revolt is persistently connected 
in the chronicles with Faustina. Cassius had ambition, 
and had only ueen prevented by his father in earlier years 
from rising against Antoninus Pius. In 174 or 175, it is 
said by Dio, he received a message from Faustina, pro- 
posing that, in the event of Marcus dying, he should 
marry her, and occupy the throne. Shortly after this a^ 
false message reached him that Marcus was dead, and he 
at once announced to the legions that he assumed the 
Empire. The message was quickly contradicted, but 
Cassius thought it too late to retire, and he prepared 
for a struggle. Marcus sadly moved towards the East. 
Before he had gone far, however, he learned that the 
soldiers, who hated Cassius for his rigour, had put him 
to death. 

The position of Faustina is once more in grave 
ambiguity. The writer on Cassius in the " Historia 
Augusta" gives the rumour implicating her, but rejects 
it. Unfortunately, his rejection is in this case no more 
weighty than his acceptance in others. He admits that 
his source, Marius Maximus, believes Faustina guilty, 
and ascribes it to *'a wish to defame" the Empress. 



176 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Except that the hatred of Commodus at Rome may have 
for some time been extended to the woman who had borne 
him, there is no clear reason why Maximus should 
calumniate Faustina. Dio, who lives very close to the 
time, gives it as a positive fact that Faustina secretly 
urged Cassius to marry her, and occupy the throne, if 
Marcus died. We may concur in the verdict of most of 
the writers on the matter. Marcus was ailing, delicate, 
and overburdened with work. It seemed to Faustina 
that he would not live long, and, as Commodus was a 
callow and unpromising youth, and by no means sure 
of succession, she sought an arrangement by which she 
should remain on the throne if her husband died. 

It is not generally felt that there was anything gravel}^ 
reprehensible in this, but a secret negotiation of such a 
character does not present her to us in an attractive light. 
Her subsequent zeal for the punishment of Cassius and 
his friends is equally unpleasant, even if we recall that 
she had no intention of raising him against the Emperor 
while he lived. Several letters which passed between 
Marcus and Faustina have been preserved in the " Historia 
Augusta," from Marius Maximus, and there seems to be 
little ground to doubt their genuineness. They suggest 
that Marcus was in the habit of consulting with Faustina 
on matters of grave importance. " Come up to the Alban 
Mount," he writes her, after telling of the sedition, "and 
by the favour of the gods, we will discuss the affair in 
safety." Faustina replies : 

'• I will set out to-morrow for the Alban Mount, as you 
command, but I at once implore you, if you love your 
children, to visit these rebels with the utmost severity. 
The soldiers and their leaders have fallen into evil ways, 
and they will crush us if we do not coerce them." 

In another letter she presses him again : 

'• My mother Faustina urged your father [by adoption] 
Pius, at the time of the secession of Celsus, to feel first 
for his own family. . . . You see how young Commodus is. 



THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 177 

and our son-in-law Pompeianus is older and is abroad. 
Do not spare men who have not spared you, and would not 
spare me and the children if they won." 

A later letter of Marcus tells that he has read her 
exhortation in his villa at Formiae (on the Gulf of Gaeta). 
By that time he has heard that Cassius is dead, and he will 
hear of no further revenge on his family. He will spare 
his wife and children, and beg the Senate to be moderate 
in punishing the accomplices, because " there is nothing 
that so much commends the Emperor of Rome to the 
nations as clemency." We know, in fact, that he treated 
the family of Cassius with great generosity. 

The Emperor and Empress then went to the East to 
complete the work of pacification. In the course of the 
voyage, in a little village at the foot of Mount Taurus, 
Faustina met her end in the year 175. As a matter of 
course she was placed among the gods, but Marcus was 
not content with the customary honouring of her memory. 
He gave the village the name of Faustinopolis, founded a 
fresh charity with the title of " Puellse Faustinianae," and 
built a beautiful temple at Rome, which, when he died a 
few years later, was dedicated in their joint names by the 
Senate. As if to obliterate all the rumours about her in- 
fidelity, he went on to ask extraordinary honours for her of 
the Senate. He set up a special altar, with a silver statue 
of her, in the temple of Venus, and directed that maidens 
about to marry should offer sacrifice on it ; and he had a 
golden statue of her placed on her seat in the theatre 
whenever he attended its performances. 

Dio gives two versions of the death of Faustina which 
were current in his time. Some said that she died of gout, 
from which she suffered ; others held that she put an end to 
her life in fear lest her complicity with Cassius should be 
discovered by Marcus in the East. The second theory is 
superfluous. The natural cause of death seems adequate 
enough, nor would she be in any serious danger if Marcus 
heard that Cassius had made her the pretext of his 



178 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

rebellion. Her chief misdeeds were to live after her. 
Frivolous, and probably licentious, in her early married life, 
she seems to have settled in sober ways when she became 
Empress, but we find no influence of hers in the ordering 
of affairs. Had she only reared healthy children to succeed 
her husband, she might have contributed worthily to the 
mighty task of supporting the shaken Empire. Instead, 
she gave to the Empire Lucilla and Commodus, her two 
surviving children, and it fell into a fresh degradation. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 

AS Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had been equal 
in Imperial power, and both were married, we have 
one more Empress to regard before we pass on to 
the wives of Commodus ; and the account we have already 
given of Verus will justify us in relegating her to this 
distinct chapter. Verus had married Lucilla, the eldest 
daughter of Marcus and Faustina ; but the ambiguous 
repute of her mother will warn us not to expegt a painful 
spectacle of vice in alliance with lofty virtue. Lucilla 
carries a step further the unhappy disposition which we 
have suspected in her grandmother, and more palpably 
detected in her mother. By her union with Lucius Verus 
vice was once more decked with the Imperial purple and 
justified in the eyes of Rome. We may briefly consider 
Lucilla as Empress before we follow her lamentable career 
under the reign of her brother. 

Lucilla was born in the first year of the married life of 
Marcus and Faustina. Marcus was then a pale and thin- 
blooded scholar, Faustina in the full warmth and sensuous- 
ness of young womanhood, and it was not unnatural that 
the child should inherit the temper of her mother without 
the spiritual restraint of her sire. She was educated with 
the greatest care, and was betrothed to Verus in her 
sixteenth year. Presumably by the will of her father, and 
certainly with the full assent of Verus, she remained two 
further years in the palace, while Verus wore out his 
strength in the dissipations of Antioch. Marcus heard of 

179 



i8o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

his conduct, and sent out Lucilla to marry him ; as if a 
union with a young woman of seventeen or eighteen would 
be apt to have a sobering influence on a man of Verus's 
habits and parentage. Verus met her at Ephesus, married 
her there with great pomp, and returned with her to his 
pleasures at Antioch. 

They came to Rome at the peace of i66, and Marcus 
could not fail to learn in full the character of the man to 
whom he had entrusted his daughter and half his power. 
The villa which Verus occupied in the Clodian Way was 
the most notorious house of debauch in Rome. It swarmed 
with the dancing-girls, boys, Eastern slaves, musicians, 
conjurors, etc., that Verus had brought from the East. 
One room was fitted up as a popular tavern, and we must 
leave under the veil of a dead language the abominations 
that were perpetrated there. One can only repeat such 
comparatively decent details as that Verus would have 
gladiators to fight in his house during dinner, and prolong 
the carouse until his slaves had to bear away his stupefied 
form on his couch ; or that, on other occasions, he would 
emulate the early feats of Nero, and revel at nights in the 
wine-shops and brothels of the popular quarter. One night 
he gave a superbly furnished banquet, and at the close, in 
a drunken fit, presented to his guests the costly plate, and 
even the litters, with silver-harnessed mules, in which they 
were taken home. 

Marcus made several futile attempts to brace him by 
a campaign in the north, and must have been sincerely 
relieved when he at last paid, by a premature death, the price 
of his excesses. Lucilla had then been Empress for eleven 
years. As she is barely noticed in the chronicles, we are 
left to imagine the effect on her of living through her early 
womanhood in such a palace as that of Verus. Probably 
disgust saved her very largely from the taint. Verus's 
sister Fabia lived with them, and was generally believed to 
be intimate with her brother. She at least usurped the 
place of Lucilla in authority, and the Empress must have 
been as much relieved as her father when Verus died. He 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 



I8i 



was rumoured to have been poisoned by Lucilla because 
of his relations with Fabia ; by Faustina, for betraying his 
relations with her ; and by Marcus, to rid the Empire of 
his sottishness. But an apoplectic fit would be so natural 
a crown to such a career that we can dispense with so 
much poison. 

Lucilla was then married by Marcus to an elderly and 
worthy Senator, Claudius Pompeianus. She and her 
mother strongly resented the marriage, and demanded a 
younger and more attractive husband ; but the Emperor 
was unusually firm. Unhappily, his firmness was mis- 
placed, for the austerity or age of Pompeianus effected 
what the profligacy of Verus had failed to do, and Lucilla 
fell into vicious ways. We may conjecture that this did 
not happen until after her father's death. Marcus had 
returned to the war against the Marcomanni, and, after 
three years of great exertion and sacrifice, was within sight 
of victory when death carried him off. He had not married 
again, in spite of Fabia's efforts to win him. In the fashion 
approved even by philosophers, he took a concubine to his 
bed, and virtuously refused to put a stepmother over his 
children. At his death a new Empress comes upon the 
scene, and, as Lucilla still retained her Imperial dignities 
and privileges, we shall have to consider them in an un- 
amiable conjunction. 

The last and most fatal blunder of Marcus Aurelius was 
to leave the Empire in the very uncertain hands of his son 
Commodus. War had drained the treasury; plague, famine, 
and sloth had thinned and weakened the population ; vice 
had again been enthroned for all to admire and imitate ; 
the lusty barbarians were thundering at its gates. A new 
Vespasian or Trajan was needed to restore its vigour, if 
such a restoration were possible. Yet Marcus persuaded 
himself that the pretty youth, with bright eyes and curly 
golden hair, who played at soldiering in his suite in 
Germany, could bear this enormous burden. Herodian, 
whose history of the Emperors now opens for us, tells us 
that Marcus was really concerned on the matter as he lay 



i82 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

in his last illness. There were disquieting stories about 
the character of Commodus. It was said that in his twelfth 
year he had, at Centumcellae (Civita Vecchia), ordered the 
bath-attendant to be thrown into the furnace because the 
water was not hot enough. On another occasion Marcus 
had driven away certain corrupting attendants, but had 
recalled them at the petulant tears of his son. They were 
with him in Pannonia. We may at least assume that even 
the fond eye of a father must have discerned the weakness 
of character which, in the course of a year or two, would 
let Commodus sink to indescribable depths. Marcus, 
however, trustful to the end in the sublime truths of his 
philosophy, was content to summon Commodus to his 
tent, make a pretty speech to him in the presence of 
his counsellors, and hand over to him the reins of govern- 
ment. 

For a time Commodus remained in the camp, and let 
the elders govern. Before long the lighter courtiers hint 
that it is more comfortable in Rome, and he talks of going. 
The elders frown, and Pompeianus lectures him. He bows 
submissively, but it is not long before he decides to go. 
Numbers of officers discover a similar call to the capital, 
and a gay cavalcade sets out. Rome is enchanted, and 
goes out miles along the road to meet Commodus, and 
strews flowers and laurel in his path, and enthuses over 
his handsome face and the curly hair that shines like gold 
in the sun. It was the coming of Caligula and Nero over 
again. The Roman people — quantum mutatus ab illo ! — had 
come to appreciate a pretty face, and a prospect of endless 
games, immeasurably more than the security of the 
frontier. 

When Commodus had set out with his father for 
Germany, he had been married — " hastily married," the 
chronicle says — to a lady as young and thoughtless as 
himself Crispina was a very beautiful girl, and of distin- 
guished family. Her father, Bruttius Praesens, was a 
Senator of great merit. It seems that she accompanied 
Commodus to the camp, and returned with him to Rome. 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 183 

In his train were the evil counsellors whom Marcus had 
banished and recalled. Their hour had come. 

For three years Commodus enjoyed the pleasures which 
they provided or invented for him, and left the administra- 
tion in the capable hands of his father's servants. Possibly 
this was the highest virtue Marcus had expected of him. 
But the ambition of his confidants steadily grew, and a 
bitter feud in the palace now came to a head and gave 
them an opportunity. Crispina and Lucilla were violently 
opposed to each other. The Imperial title of Lucilla paled 
beside that of the wife of the ruling Emperor. The fire 
which had been borne before her when she went abroad 
now passed to Crispina, and she had to yield precedence 
in the palace and the theatre. Crispina, on the other hand, 
resented the familiarity of Commodus with his sister, and 
would hardly be ignorant of the interpretation that was 
generally put on it. The adherents of the palace were 
thus divided into two parties, and the Empresses fought 
for the monopoly of Commodus's favour. At last Lucilla 
despaired of gaining her end through Commodus, and 
resolved to have him murdered. 

There is no room for doubt that the daughter of 
Faustina and Marcus Aurelius was an abandoned woman, 
Dio declares that she was " no better than Commodus." 
We may trust that this is an exaggeration, but the other 
authorities speak of the looseness of her conduct, and 
are emphatically agreed that she inspired the plot to 
murder her brother. No one doubts that her purpose 
was to recover supreme power. The inferences and im- 
pressions we draw from Imperial portraits are not very 
substantial, but it is interesting that the statue of Lucilla, 
which we have, suggests just the type of woman that 
the historians represent her to have been. It is the figure 
of a full-bodied woman, of strong and imperious temper, 
sensual to the limit of grossness. In her the beauty of 
her mother, instead of being enhanced by the purity of her 
father, is blighted by a general expression of coarseness 
and self-assertion. 



1 84 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Her criminal design was gradually imparted to her 
lovers. Among these was a young noble named Quadratus, 
whom she soon fired with a sense of her grievances, 
and a conspiracy was framed. The actual assassination 
was undertaken by her stepson, Claudius Pompeianus. 
Herodian says that his name was Quintianus, and he may 
have had this name in addition. Dio gives a confused and 
contradictory account — he describes Pompeianus as married 
to Lucilla's daughter, whereas Lucilla was married to his 
father, and he says that she was intimate with him, yet 
hated him and wished to destroy him — but, as he lived 
in Rome at the time, we must accept the substance of 
his story. The young Senator Pompeianus was an intimate 
friend of Commodus, and only an infatuation for Lucilla 
could have drawn him into the plot. He spoiled it, and 
ruined the conspirators, by his melodramatic display. As 
Commodus entered the amphitheatre, he rushed upon 
him with a drawn sword. But he announced his purpose 
by crying out : " The Senate sends thee this sword," and 
the guards arrested him. 

The plot gave Commodus an opportunity to make a 
bloody clearance of those who hampered his plans, and 
caused him to regard the Senate with dark suspicion. 
The male conspirators were executed, and Lucilla was 
banished to Capreae. But Crispina had no triumph by 
the removal of her rival. She had herself been tainted in 
that atmosphere of vice, and was detected in one of her 
liaisons by Commodus. She was banished to Capreae, and 
there both she and Lucilla were put to death. 

The conspiracy took place in the year 182, the third 
year of Commodus's reign. The remaining ten years of 
his life it would be more agreeable to leave in the un- 
translatable language of the chroniclers, but he virtually 
shared his throne with a woman of a singular and in- 
teresting type, and we must include her in the gallery 
of wives of the Emperors. Among the property of the 
wealthy young conspirator, Quadratus, which was at once 
confiscated, was a very handsome and engaging concubine 



^^H 




^^^^H 


^^^I^^I^^^^^^^B'''"^' -rj^l 


B 


^^1 


Hk 




^^H 


1 vR'^^-l 


^1 


HHlf mm£^ '^-^^1^:^^^ 


^^^P 




^^K 


^^^iJ^^ 



LUCILLA 

BUST IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, ROME 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 185 

of the name of Marcia. The concubinatus was, as I have 
said, a legal and recognized union in Rome, and we must 
not regard these women, who enter our chronicle in that 
capacity, in quite the same light as the mistresses of later 
Christian princes. They were sometimes of moderately 
good family, though they seem generally to have belonged 
to the class of emancipated slaves, and were included in the 
man's property. Marcia was of the latter class. Probably 
an orphan at an early age, she was brought up by a 
eunuch, and sold by him to Quadratus. At the dispersal 
of his property, or even during his life, she attracted the 
notice of Commodus, and was transferred to the populous 
harem of his three hundred concubines. 

A few years later (185) an event occurred that greatly 
increased her growing power over the Emperor, The chief 
favourite of Commodus was a low-born and despicable 
courtier named Perennis, who encouraged the Emperor to 
pursue his morbid sensual impulses, while he himself 
accumulated wealth and power. He flattered and indulged 
every fancy of his besotted master, and controlled all the 
resources of the State in his own interest. He was com- 
mander of the guards, and seems to have at length conceived 
an ambition to displace Commodus. One day, when Com- 
modus presided at the games, which he very liberally 
provided, before an immense crowd, a mild-looking man — 
said to be a philosopher — rushed into the centre of the 
stage and roared out a warning to the Emperor that 
Perennis was acquiring wealth and aiming at the throne. 
The prefect had him burned alive, and escaped the Em- 
peror's suspicion ; but the end was nearer than he expected. 
A regiment of fifteen hundred men from the legions of 
Britain marched into Rome, demanded the head of Perennis, 
and forced Commodus to recognize and punish the faults of 
his minister. 

From that time Marcia occupies the place of prima inter 
pares in the harem of Commodus. A good deal of re- 
search has been expended on this leading concubine of the 
Emperor, because there was a tradition in early Christian 



1 86 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

literature that she favoured and protected, if she did not 
herself belong to, the new religion.^ It was said that she 
sent the eunuch, who had reared her, to liberate the 
repressed Christians of Sardinia, and the peace which they 
enjoyed at Rome during the reign of Commodus is attri- 
buted to her influence. But if Marcia-had ever belonged 
to the austere sect of the early Christians, we must, for its 
credit, entirely dissociate her from it in her Imperial days. 
She seems to have been to the brutal Commodus what 
Caesonia had been to the equally licentious Caligula. She 
dressed willingly as an Amazon, and is actually represented 
on the coins, with Commodus, in the helmet of a female 
warrior. If we may put any trust in that meagre portrait 
of her, she seems to have been of much the same type as 
Caesonia : a handsome, strong, vulgar woman, owing her 
influence to her masculine robustness. 

For seven years she occupied, without a quarrel, the 
chief place in a palace in which all the orgies of Caligula, 
Nero, and Verus were concentrated. At her persuasion 
Commodus changed the name of Rome to " the Colony 
of Commodus." One might almost suspect her of genial 
irony in thus removing the venerable name from the Im- 
perial city during the years when it was degraded by 
Commodus. Evil as the practices of Caligula and Nero had 
been, they were surpassed by the insanities and obscenities 
of the son of Marcus Aurelius, We must leave the veil 
over the life that was witnessed in the palace during those 
ten years ; but the crimes of Commodus were not confined 
to the wild indulgence of his unbridled appetites. The 
company of gladiators and the daily pleasure of killing 
degraded him to the character of a mere butcher. He 
forced the priests of orgiastic Eastern cults to perform on 
themselves the mutilations which their ritual described; 
he beat them with the emblem of Anubis which he carried 
in their processions. On one occasion he had all the 
citizens of Rome with some infirmity of the feet gathered 
in one place, and more or less dressed as dragons. Then 

' See Dr. Bassani's little work, "Commodo e Marcia." 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 187 

the Roman Hercules — as Commodus loved to be called— 
fell upon them with a club, and killed numbers of them. 
This and other stories of his indescribable lust and cruelty- 
are told by an historian who saw Commodus daily. 

In the year 189 Marcia obtained even greater power 
over her insane lover. The place of Perennis had been 
at once occupied by another of the Emperor's despicable 
courtiers, Cleander, a Phrygian slave who had risen, by 
base means, to be the first minister of the Empire. Like 
his predecessor, he encouraged Commodus to wallow in his 
vices, while he took advantage of his insanity to enrich 
himself. The highest positions in the State were sold by 
him, and men could even purchase from him the right to 
take vengeance on their enemies, or the privilege not to 
be executed for their wealth. The treasury was again 
diminishing, and noble blood poured out freely to refresh 
it. A great pestilence swept over Italy, exacting thousands 
of victims daily in Rome alone. A terrible famine suc- 
ceeded it. The people, observing that the avaricious 
minister was endeavouring to make a corner in corn, now 
broke into rebellion and pressed to the palace of the 
Emperor. 

Commodus was enjoying himself at the beautiful palace 
of the Quintilians in the suburbs, which he had obtained 
by murder, when the crowd surged up to the gates. 
Cleander turned the cavalry upon the people, but the 
infantry sided with them, and they returned in a storm 
of anger to the palace. None of his ministers dare 
approach the room in which Commodus wantoned with 
his companions, but his sister Fadilla and Marcia broke 
in with the news that his life was in danger. Some 
writers say that it was Fadilla who informed him, some 
that it was Marcia. We may suppose that both of them 
endeavoured to awake him. The voluptuous coward at 
once sacrificed Cleander to the crowd, and returned to 
his vices. 

Marcia had now the leading influence over Commodus, 
and Rome sank lower and lower. The butcheries of the 



1 88 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

amphitheatre were his chief concern. He consorted daily 
with the gladiators, killed vast numbers of beasts in the 
arena, and even fought with men who had meekly to 
submit to be slain by him. Numbers of distinguished or 
wealthy Romans were put to death on the most frivolous 
pretexts, yet the Senators were compelled to view and 
applaud his daily slaughters with such cries as : " Thou 
conquerest the world, O brave Amazonian." Dio, who 
sat among the Senators, tells us that one day Commodus 
made a grotesque attempt to intimidate them. He had 
just killed an ostrich, and came toward them with the 
head in one hand and the bloody sword in the other. 
He grinned and wagged his head, without saying a word, 
as he approached them, as if intimating that it would 
be their turn next. Dio says that his appearance was 
so ludicrous that he had hastily to pluck a leaf of laurel, 
and chew it, to prevent him from laughing. We nearly 
missed the writing of one of the most valuable histories 
of the period. 

The " Golden Age," as the Senate was compelled to 
describe this appalling decade, came to a close through a 
fresh excess on the part of Commodus Pius, as he was 
now styled. They had reached the last day of the year 
192, and were preparing for the great festivities of the 
morrow. Commodus informed Marcia that he would 
spend the night in the house of the gladiators, and issue 
from it on the morrow at their head. He ordered his 
chamberlain Eclectus and his commander of the guard 
Laetus to make the necessary preparation. Marcia and 
the officers were horrified at his proposal, and besought 
him to abandon it. After reading the disgusting details 
of his career in the ** Historia Augusta" — even if we 
make allowance for exaggeration — one has some difficulty 
in realizing their indignation. Apparently, however, this 
proposal to identify himself so intimately with the de- 
graded caste of public gladiators was regarded by them 
as something of an entirely different nature from the filth 
and obscenity of his practices in the palace, and they 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 189 

boldly opposed him. He angrily shook them off, and put 
their names on his condemned list. The "Augustan 
History," recalling a story we have heard before, intro- 
duces an element of romance into the adventure. It 
makes Commodus tie the tablet to his bed, and go to 
sleep, when the tablet is playfully removed by one of his 
jewel-decked boys, and delivered accidentally into the 
hands of Marcia. 

It is better to follow the version of Dio, who was in 
Rome at the time. The two officers and Marcia, realizing 
that they had incurred his anger, discussed the matter, 
and decided to assassinate him. Marcia was directed to 
poison him. She put the poison in the meat he ate, but 
its effect was spoiled by the quantity of wine he had 
drunk, and it caused him to vomit. He became suspicious 
and threatening, and went to the bath. They then hastily 
took into their confidence his powerful and athletic bath- 
attendant. Narcissus, and he entered and strangled the 
Emperor. 

One reads with something like amazement that the 
successful conspirators, instead of gladly announcing that 
they had rid Rome of such a brute and tyrant, deliberated 
anxiously how they should proceed. So blind was the 
attachment of the troops to their paymaster, and of the 
common citizens to any generous provider of games, that 
they concealed the deed. Commodus had himself fought 
735 times in the public amphitheatre, and on those per- 
formances alone had spent 200,000,000 drachmas. The 
temper of the demoralized people and soldiers was un- 
certain, and they decided to put the Empire at once in 
the hands of a strong soldier. 

In the romantic story of the accession of the various 
Empresses of Rome there are few cases so dramatic as 
that which introduces the next Empress in the series. 
There was living in Rome at the time an experienced 
commander, in his sixtieth year, of the name of Pertinax, 
His father had kept a kind of tavern in a village of 
Liguria. The son had obtained some education, and 



190 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

rapidly climbed the ladder of promotion. He had married 
Flavia Titiana, the accomplished daughter of a very 
wealthy and distinguished Senator. Himself enamoured 
of Cornificia, the sister of Marcus Aurelius, he had over- 
looked the vivacity of his wife, and she had at one time 
attracted comment by her open regard for a musician. At 
the time of the murder of Commodus, Pertinax was 
Prefect of Rome. He retired to bed on that last night 
of the year 192 with no suspicion of the great events 
that were happening in the Domus Vectiliana, to which, 
it seems, Commodus had gone. 

In the middle of the night he was awakened with the 
message that the captain of the Praetorian Guards wished 
to see him. He calmly said that he had for some time 
expected to be executed by Commodus, and he continued 
to lie, in quiet dignity, when Lsetus entered to tell him 
that they offered him the Empire. He begged Laetus to 
abandon his unseemly joke, and carry out his orders. He 
was at last convinced that Commodus was dead, and, 
through the darkness of the stormy winter night, they 
made their way to the camp. They announced to the 
guards that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and that 
Pertinax was submitted to be chosen by them as Emperor. 
The soldiers listened with no enthusiasm. Under the 
license of the reign of Commodus they had been permitted 
to take the most extraordinary liberties, and they dreaded 
the accession of a commander. The news had, however, 
spread by this time through the city. People crowded 
into the torch-lit streets, and poured out toward the 
camp, hailing the name of Pertinax and execrating that 
of Commodus. A promise of 3,000 denarii to each man 
overcame the last opposition of the Guards, and they 
coldly consented to the choice. In the Senate, too, there 
was hesitation. " We see behind you," said the consul 
Falco, " the ministers of Commodus's crimes, Laetus and 
Marcia." Pertinax himself, indeed, was still very reluc- 
tant ; but the Senate urged the Imperial power upon him, 
and the new year dawned at Rome upon a people angrily 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 191 

scattering the statues and memorials of Commodus, and 
expressing a wild rejoicing over the advent of its new 
ruler. 

Titiana never bore the title of Augusta, and we may 
dismiss very briefly her few months of residence in the 
palace. The Senate offered the title of Augusta to Titiana, 
and that of Caesar to their son, but Pertinax refused both. 
" Let the boy earn it," he said of his son ; and Dio says 
that he kept the title from his wife, either because of the 
insecurity of his position, or '* because he would not let his 
lascivious consort stain the name of Augusta." Titiana 
was evidently not the kind of woman to co-operate with 
Pertinax in his reforms, and she probably shared the dis- 
dain with which her friends regarded his ways. Although 
he at once began to undo the evil wrought by Commodus— 
to banish the informers, regulate the taxes, and purify the 
administration of justice — he alienated the Romans by 
passing to an extreme of sobriety. The palace he purified 
in very summary fashion. He had the whole apparatus 
of Commodus's luxury sold by auction, and Rome looked 
on with delight as the three hundred pretty boys and three 
hundred choice concubines, the gold and silver plate, the 
precious vases and silks and chariots and wonderful 
machines of the Sybarite were exposed to their view. 
But Pertinax carried his economy too far. Patricians 
told with contempt that he would put half a lettuce on 
the Imperial borrd, and would make a hare last three 
days ; the people missed the unceasing stimulation of 
the amphitheatre; the soldiers chafed at the discipline he 
sought to enforce. Within three months of his remark- 
able accession to power Pertinax was assassinated by the 
Guards, and Titiana fell back into the obscurity from 
which she had momentarily emerged. 

Another Empress of a day, and one that came to the 
throne under no less romantic circumstances, claims our 
attention for a moment before we pass on to a more 
imposing figure. 

It was on the 28th of March, 193, that the soldiers 



192 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

brutally assassinated Pertinax. On the rumour of trouble 
Pertinax had sent his father-in-law, Sulpicianus, to secure 
tranquillity in the camp. As he lingered there the soldiers 
returned with the dripping head of the Emperor, and he 
recognized that the throne was vacant. With a callousness 
that is almost incredible, but is fully attested, he at once 
made an offer of money to the soldiers for the Imperial 
power. It occurred to some of the soldiers that a higher 
bid might be secured, and they announced from the ram- 
part of their camp, in which they had enclosed themselves, 
that the throne was, virtually, on sale. In particular, 
they sent word to one of the wealthiest citizens, Didius 
Julianus, and invited him to make an offer. Whether or 
no it be true that he yielded to the vanity of his wife 
and daughter — he does not seem to have needed pressure 
— Julianus went to the camp, and made a higher offer 
than that of Sulpicianus. 

It was the early evening, and a crowd had gathered 
to witness the appalling spectacle of the sale of the Empire. 
Julianus pointed out that his rival was the father-in-law of 
the man they had killed, and might be expected to have some 
design of revenge. The soldiers admitted Julianus by a 
ladder, and the two Senators made bids against each other, 
the soldiers on the wall announcing their offers. At length 
Julianus made an offer equal to more than j^2oo to each 
soldier, and he was greeted as Emperor. Under the close 
guard of the soldiers he was conducted, amid an angry 
people, to the Senate, and forced upon the Senators. They 
then concluded their bargain by conducting him to the 
palace, and the vain old man had time to reflect on the 
extraordinary situation he had suddenly reached. His 
wife, Manila Scantilla, and daughter, Didia Clara, joined 
him *' in fear and concern " (the " Historia Augusta " says), 
and he finished the day with a prolonged entertainment. 

His wife and daughter were decorated with the title of 
Augusta on the morrow, but they soon found that Julianus 
had squandered his comfortable wealth on a dangerous 
bauble. Not only did the Roman people jeer at him 



THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 193 

whenever he appeared, but the news soon came that the 
distant legions were aflame with anger, and were about 
to march on Rome to wrest the Empire from him. Pre- 
sently he heard that the commander of the troops in 
Pannonia had begun his march at the head of a formidable 
army. Julianus first had him declared a public enemy, and 
sent men to assassinate him ; then he offered to share the 
Empire with him. Severus and his hardened troops passed 
relentlessly over the Alps, and proceeded along the plains 
of Italy. Julianus stung the demoralized soldiers who had 
sold him the Empire into some pretence of resistance, 
threw up earthworks in the suburbs, endeavoured to train 
his elephants for the fight, and, as a last resort, fortified 
the palace. But his effeminate troops quailed before the 
seasoned legions from Germany, and, when Severus reached 
Rome, Julianus found himself deserted. The Senate de- 
creed his death, and he was beheaded in the palace which 
he had enjoyed, at the price of his fortune and his life, for 
sixty-six days. And the two broken-hearted Augustae 
laid down their dignity, and bore the body of Didius 
Julianus to the tomb of his ancestors. 

Marcia, too, had ended her semi-imperial career with a 
violent death. After the assassination of Commodus she 
had married the chamberlain Eclectus, with whom she had 
long been intimate. Eclectus became the chamberlain of 
Pertinax, and perished, not ignobly, with his master. 
Marcia did not long survive her husband, however. 
Julianus had promised the soldiers that he would avenge 
the murder of Commodus, and he sought the remaining 
members of the conspiracy, Laetus, Narcissus, and Marcia, 
and put them to death. 



13 



CHAPTER XII 

JULIA DOMNA 

WITH the accession of Septimius Severus to the 
throne, we find ourselves confronting one of the 
most dominant personaHties in the long line of 
Roman Empresses — a woman of the standard of Livia, 
Agrippina, and Plotina — and passing again into one of the 
brighter periods of the life of the Empire. The degrada- 
tion of Commodus's reign will disappear like a mist on a 
summer morn; the jaded frame of the Empire will seem 
to recover all its vigour in a few years. These periods 
of rapid recovery are not sufficiently appreciated by the 
rhetorical censors of the morals of Rome, whose investi- 
gations are almost entirely confined to the reigns of 
Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus ; as 
if it were just to define the climate of a region by its worst 
days only. Let a strong man rise to power, let an imperial 
encouragement be given to virtue and manliness, and even 
the city of Rome takes on a normal moral aspect. The 
throne is but an electric point, and, according as it is posi- 
tive or negative, it draws into the light of history either the 
good or the bad elements of Rome. Both are there all the 
time. And if the good rulers had made as drastic a purge 
of evil types, as evil rulers made of good types, when they 
came to power, the Empire might not have provided so 
much material to the censors of extinct civilizations. 

The Empresses whom we have hitherto considered 
were, with a few exceptions, the daughters of Roman 
patricians, or of distinguished provincials who had lived in 
Rome for a generation or two. In fulia Domna, the wife 

194 



JULIA DOMNA 195 

of Severus, we have for the first time a woman of the East 
on the throne ; and, as her family will for some time 
deeply influence the fortunes of the Empire, it will be 
interesting to glance at her origin. 

On the bank of the Orontes in Syria, at the large village 
or small town of Emesa (now Hems), there was in the 
second century a very ancient and prosperous religious 
centre. At some early date in the history of the land a 
mysterious stone had been cast on the country from the 
home of the gods — a meteorite, modern science would call 
it — and it had been set up as a symbol of the Regenerating 
God (Elagabal, which the Greeks improperly turned into 
Heliogabalus, or Sun-god). A fine temple was in time 
built to shelter it, pilgrims sought it from the whole 
country, and the richest gifts were made to the god and 
his living representatives. About the middle of the second 
century the priest in charge was a certain Bassianus, who 
had two handsome and very clever daughters. The planets 
which presided at the birth of the elder promised her, 
according to the astrologers, a throne ; and, as there was 
a camp of Roman soldiers near Emesa, and the temple 
was a great attraction to the soldiers in their exile, the 
pretty Syrian girl and her horoscope came to be known 
very far away. In the year i86 or 187 an off'er of marriage 
came to the priest's daughter from one of the highest 
officials, the legatus, of the rich province of Lower Gaul, 
and she crossed sea and land to accept it. Within six 
years this officer, Septimius Severus, was Emperor of 
Rome, and Julia Domna was Empress. 

Some doubt has been thrown on this pretty story, and 
Serviez, whose chapter on Julia Domna is a piece of irre- 
sponsible fiction, describes her as coming to Rome, on her 
own account, in search of adventure. But we have abun- 
dant evidence that Severus was a most enthusiastic 
astrologer, and there is nothing improbable in the story. 
Severus was of the province of Roman Africa, of humble 
family, and, like so many energetic men in the days of 
Antoninus and Marcus, had earned promotion from office 



196 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

to office. He had first married a certain Paccia Marciana 
at Rome. He was then made Praetor, had a military 
command in Spain and Gaul, spent some years in study 
at Athens, and became Legate of the Lugdunian province. 
At Lyons he lost his first wife, and sought a second. Hear- 
ing that there was a maid in Syria with a royal horoscope, 
he sent for her, and married her at Lyons. A child was born 
the first year, and, although Bassianus (more popularly, 
Caracalla) is described by Eutropius and Aurelius Victor 
as her stepson, he was undoubtedly her first child. Geta, 
his brother and co-Emperor, was born two years later. 

By that time they were living in Rome, where Severus 
was Consul. Commodus, whose follies excited his ambition 
no less than his disdain, gave him the command in Lower 
Germany. Immediately afterwards Commodus was assas- 
sinated, and about three months later came the news of the 
murder of Pertinax. It was easy to inflame the troops 
with anger on this occasion, and, as Severus offered a more 
than usually heavy bribe, he was acclaimed Emperor, and, 
as we saw, led the legions upon Rome. We do not know 
whether Julia had remained at Rome, or accompanied him, 
but she would be present when Rome greeted its new 
ruler. He rode in full armour, in the centre of a picked 
body of six hundred men. When, however, he saw that 
Rome had entirely deserted Julianus, he entered the city in 
civic costume, on foot. Flowers and laurel and gay hang- 
ings decorated all the houses, and the early summer sun 
shone on the white-robed masses of the citizens. Another 
splendid, but less joyous, spectacle was offered on the 
morrow, when a wax image of Pertinax was honoured with 
an Imperial funeral. Then he set about the stern business 
of securing his Empire. He had no title to it but his sword, 
and there were two other able generals — Albinus in Britain 
and Niger in Syria — urging the same title on their own 
behalf. 

We do not know whether Julia accompanied Severus 
during the long civil war that followed. Some of the 
authorities represent her as egging on her husband to the 



JULIA DOMNA 197 

destruction of his rivals. The advice would not be un- 
natural, but it would be so superfluous that we disregard 
the statement. With a craft that has not won him the 
regard of historians, Severus held Albinus in Britain with 
the empty title of Caesar, while he proceeded to crush 
Niger in the East, As there are coins of the year 196 which 
entitle Julia " Mother of the Camps," ^ she probably accom- 
panied Severus to the East, but we need not pursue the 
long campaign. Severus committed the work to his 
generals, and kept watch over Rome and the West. Several 
years were absorbed in pacifying the East, and he then 
turned toward Britain. Acting under the strain of African 
barbarism which undoubtedly existed in the nature of 
Severus, he sent men with a treacherous commission to 
murder Albinus, and the discovery of the plot brought the 
British legions thundering over Gaul. The rivals met 
decisively at Lyons, and a titanic conflict ended with the 
triumph of Severus. 

Rome had followed the even struggle with suspense, 
and some had ventured to take sides. The omens were 
ambiguous. A strange light — the aurora — flickered in the 
northern sky, and a rain mixed with silver — Dio soberly 
assures us that he plated several bronze coins with it — fell 
upon the city. Human judgment had been as uncertain as 
that of the gods, and many of the Romans had espoused 
the "white" (Albinus) or the "black" (Niger) cause, 
instead of that of the " grey," to put it in the language of 
the hour. For Severus to have abstained entirely from 
punishing those who had supported his rivals, after the 
years of anxiety they had caused him, is too much to 
expect; but it must be admitted that his vengeance was 
cruel, and that his plea of the security of the State was 

' The references on coins and inscriptions to Julia Domna have been 
industriously collected by Mary Gilmore Wilkins, American Journal of 
ArchcBology, 2nd series, vol. vi. They do not add materially to our knowledge 
of her, but are so abundant that they show her to have been an Empress 
of exceptional prominence and influence. She became Augusta in the first 
year. 



198 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

little more than a cloak for a very human resentment. The 
"Historia Augusta" gives a ghastly list of forty-one Senators 
whom he put to death, and crowds of lesser folk suffered 
from his vindictiveness. From Syria to Gaul he marked 
the progress of his triumph with a trail of human blood. 

Of the attitude of Julia in regard to these executions we 
have no knowledge. Severus was a cruel and passionate 
African, and we have no reason to think that any one 
impelled him to commit these deeds. His whole behaviour 
in the hour of triumph was injudicious and unworthy. He 
made a most unpleasant speech to the Senate in praise of 
Commodus, and directed that the highest honours should 
be paid to his memory. It may be that the consciousness 
of his lowly origin — which his sister tactlessly irritated by 
coming to Rome, and displaying her rural innocence to the 
amusement of the nobles — made him more suspicious of the 
patrician order than he need have been. Albinus, however, 
had come of a most ancient and honourable, if somewhat 
decayed, stock, and his finer blood may have influenced the 
Senate. 

Leaving Rome under a painful impression of his harsh 
use of power, he set out for the East, where the Parthians 
were again in arms. Julia accompanied him on this cam- 
paign, but it is of little interest. The Parthians retired 
before his advance, and he pursued them down the 
Euphrates, and for a time held Babylon and several of the 
ancient cities of the East. Foiled, and incurring heavy 
losses, in the siege of Hatra, he retired sullenly from 
Mesopotamia, and sought consolation in a pleasant tour 
through Palestine and Egypt. They returned to Rome, 
about the beginning of the third century, for their first long 
stay in the capital. 

The remarkable number of inscriptions that still survive 
in the most distant parts of the Empire bear witness that 
Julia was already regarded as an active Empress, not 
merely as the companion of Severus. Probably she comes 
next to Livia — some would place her before Livia — in the 
general recognition of her political existence. But on her 



JULIA DOMNA 199 

return to Rome she found a bitter opponent in the person 
of Severus's chief minister, and for a time she confined 
herself to personal concerns. This minister, Plautianus, 
was a fellow-townsman, possibly a relative, of the Emperor, 
and enjoyed and abused his entire confidence. He was 
promoted to the command of the Praetorian Guards, whom 
Severus, after punishing them for the murder of Pertinax, 
had reorganized and enormously increased. Finding him- 
self at the head of fifty thousand picked men, and entrusted, 
during the long absence of the Emperor, with the supreme 
affairs of State, Plautianus indulged his vanity in the 
strangest excesses. When his superb chariot drove through 
Rome, runners were sent ahead to warn the common folk 
that they must turn away, and not gaze on his august 
person ; and there were more statues of him in Rome than 
of the Emperor. He even had a hundred Romans, of 
all ages, including many of noble birth, emasculated, in 
order that his daughter might be attended with all the 
splendour and security of an Oriental harem. Severus 
begged the hand of this privileged maiden for his elder 
son. Bassianus was then (203) in his sixteenth year, and 
had just been nominated Caesar by his father. Plautianus 
consented, and a princely wedding took place. People 
remarked, as the rich gifts were borne through the Forum 
to the palace, that the Prefect of the Guards had been able 
to give his daughter a dowry that would have sufficed for 
the daughters of fifty kings. 

Two circumstances conspired to wreck this auspicious 
marriage. Bassianus disliked Plautilla, Julia hated her 
conceited and overbearing father. A third circumstance, 
in the opinion of Rome, was that Bassianus was already 
too intimate with a fiery little Syrian cousin, then living at 
the palace, of whom we shall see much in the next chapter. 
At length Plautianus brought a formal charge against the 
Empress, and there was agitation in the palace. The 
charge seems to have been one of adultery, and, though 
it was not established, some of the later historians declare 
that she owed her escape only to the fondness of Severus. 



200 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Aurelius Victor (" De Csesaribus," xx) says that " his wife's 
infamies robbed Severus of the height of his glory " ; and 
he charges her with, to the Emperor's knowledge, loose ways 
and treason. Lampridius (" Historia Augusta," " Severus," 
c. 1 8) affirms that she was "notorious for her adulteries 
and guilty of conspiracy." Eutropius and Herodian join 
with them in bringing an even graver charge against her 
later. Dio, however, who was on the spot, brings no 
charge against her character, and many hold that his 
silence is more instructive than the chatter of later 
compilers. We may add that Severus was very eager to 
stamp out adultery, and, although his efforts were 
frustrated by the unwillingness of the citizens to use his 
law — Dio, when he was consul, found three thousand charges 
lying unheeded in the offices — his known temper must be 
taken into account. On the other hand, Dio wrote his 
history in the reign of a member of Julia's family, and may 
have omitted much out of discretion. 

The evidence is, as usual, perplexing, and there is no 
need to press for a verdict. The Oriental religion, to 
which Julia adhered, was not one to lay bonds upon the 
passion of love, and the removal from the guarded seclusion 
of the East to the free life of the West would not engender 
scruples. The charge, in fact, was not'admitted by Severus 
to be proved, though noble dames were tortured to wring 
evidence from them. After this scorching ordeal, how- 
ever, Juha moderated her open hostility to Plautianus, 
and sought consolation in a close apphcation to letters 
and philosophy. Her sister, Julia Maesa, had by this 
time come from Emesa to join her in the palace, and 
had brought two married daughters, of whom we shall 
hear more.^ With these, and the literary men of Rome, 
she formed an intellectual circle, and withdrew from politics. 

But there can be little doubt that Julia encouraged her 

* I conclude that they had already come to Rome because Elagabalus, the 
son of Soaemias, was given serious consideration in his later claim that he was 
the son of Bassianus. He was born in 204, and, unless his mother had been 
in the palace before that date, the claim could not have been made. 



JULIA DOMNA 201 

son's dislike of Plautilla. Herodian declares that the 
young wife was " a most shameless creature." We may 
refuse to accept this description of the unhappy young 
princess, and see in it only an echo of the attack upon 
her. Bullied and threatened by Bassianus, she at last 
returned in tears to her father's mansion, and the Prefect 
renewed his attacks with great warmth. Severus refused 
to hear complaints against him, until his brother Geta 
suggested to him, on his death-bed, that Plautianus was 
acquiring his enormous wealth with a view to seizing the 
throne. From that hour Severus behaved more coldly to 
his minister, and Julia's party took courage. At length 
Bassianus persuaded his father that the minister was 
plotting. If we may believe the romantic version, Plau- 
tianus sent a man to assassinate Severus and his sons. 
The man betrayed him at the palace, and was directed 
by Bassianus to return and pretend to bring the Prefect 
to see the dead bodies. At all events, Plautianus came 
in haste to the palace, was alarmed to see the gates close 
behind him, and was led to the presence of the Emperor 
and Bassianus. Shortly afterwards, the head of Plautianus 
was tossed on to the street from the roof of the palace. 
Dio adds that a man plucked a handful of hair from the 
bleeding head, and rushed with it to Julia and Plautilla, 
crying : " Behold your Plautianus ! " The unhappy girl was 
banished to Lipara, and was executed there by Bassianus 
after the death of his father. 

It was perhaps inevitable that a series of executions 
should follow the fall of the favourite, but in a short time 
the life of the palace fell into a quiet routine. Severus, 
a big, powerful man, with a crown of grey hair above 
his venerable features, set an example of sobriety and 
industry. He was generally at work before dawn, and 
would return to work after a frugal midday-meal with 
his boys. They were years of peace and prosperity, and 
he made admirable use of the opportunity to restore the 
decaying buildings and institutions of the Empire, and to 
replenish the treasury. He regretted his lack of culture, 



202 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

and listened with deference to the learned discussions in 
which his wife and her relatives engaged. His one ac- 
complishment in the way of science was a thorough com- 
mand of the mysteries of astrology, as the golden stars 
with which he decorated the ceilings of his palace informed 
the visitor. 

Julia joined with him in the work of restoration. We 
know that at Rome she rebuilt the temple of Vesta, and 
the numerous provincial inscriptions suggest a much wider 
interest. Under her lead the women of Rome were en- 
couraged to look beyond their homes. Sabina had erected, 
or dedicated, a meeting-hall for women in the Forum of 
Trajan, but it had fallen into decay. Julia restored this 
early "women's club," and no doubt introduced into it 
the enthusiasm for letters and philosophy which she still 
had. Her *' circle," as Philostratus calls it, probably in- 
cluded the historian Dio, who was still at Rome, and the 
poet Appian, who had some years before described her 
as "the great Domna." Philostratus himself, a Greek 
writer and rhetorician, one of the most learned men of the 
time, was closely associated with her. It was at her request 
that he wrote his famous " Life of Apollonius of Tyana." 
In his "Lives of the Sophists" (Philiscus) he speaks of 
her as "Julia the Philosopher," and in one of his letters 
(Ixxiii) he refers with high appreciation to her learning. 

Julia was then in the prime of her life, and in her 
happiest days. The bust of her that quickly catches the 
eye in the Vatican Museum — the largest surviving portrait- 
bust of the period — will hardly be deemed to possess the 
beauty with which the historians invest her. The thick 
lips and large nose, which betray her ancestry, do not 
compare well with the features of other Empresses. But 
the grave, strong, thoughtful face and large eyes, which 
we may imagine instinct with Syrian fire, are undeniably 
handsome. Her sister, Julia Maesa, was with her — a 
woman of similar strength, moderation, and judgment. 
But the younger generation in the palace gave them con- 
cern. The young men, Bassianus and Geta, were loose 




JULIA DOMNA 

BUST IN THE VATICAN MUSEUM 



JULIA DOMNA 263 

and luxurious in their ways ; and one of the daughters of 
Maesa, Julia Soaemias, was a fit companion for Bassianus, 
Severus, noting the advance of his gout, looked with grave 
eyes on the soft habits and the constant quarrels of the 
sons whom he wished to leave partners in the Empire. 

An irruption of the Caledonians in the north of Britain 
led him to think that a campaign under his eyes would 
alter the evil ways of his sons, and he set out for the 
West. Julia accompanied them, but we can hardly suppose 
that she ventured further north than Eboracum (York). 
The mist-wrapped hills and watery lowlands beyond were 
to the Roman a shuddering wilderness, fit only for the 
breeding of savages who were as amphibious as rats. 
Dio unflatteringly describes the north Britons and Scots 
of the time as ** inhabiting wild, waterless mountains and 
desolate, swampy plains," and " dwelHng in tents, without 
coats or shoes, possessing their wives and rearing their 
offspring in common." We may find some consolation in 
the assurance of Lampridius that Britain (south of this 
region) was "the greatest glory of the Empire." Even 
the Scots, however, had their glories. When Severus 
returned to York, after having pushed to the extreme 
north of Caledonia, and lost 50,000 men without bringing 
the elusive enemy to battle, he brought with him envoys 
of the Caledonians to discuss the terms of peace. Among 
them was the wife of the chief " Argentocoxus " — should 
it be Macdermott? — with whom the philosophic Empress 
held converse through an interpreter. Julia insinuated that 
their matrimonial arrangements were not all that could be 
desired. " We satisfy the needs of nature in a much better 
way than you Roman women," said the hardy Scot. " We 
have dealings openly with the best of our men, whereas 
you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest." 
Eugenics is an ancient practice, if a modern theory. 

Severus was borne back, weary and dispirited, on his 
litter to York. Bassianus, impatient to reach the throne 
that he would soon disgrace, had attempted his father's 
life, and fully exhibited the brutality of his character. Yet 



204 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Severus, who had often censured Marcus Aurelius for 
entrusting the Empire to Commodus, listened in turn to 
the fond pleading of his parental feeling, and designated 
his sons as his successors. He died at York in February, 
211, and a hasty settlement was made of affairs in Britain 
that they might return at once to the capital. They 
placed the ashes of the Emperor in an alabaster urn, and 
set out with it for Rome. 

From that day the life of Julia Domna was one of 
anxiety, and we may trust that it was one of pain. Even 
on the journey homeward her sons were ostentatiously 
armed against each other's designs. Bassianus — or Anto- 
ninus, as he had now been named — was a strong, brutal, 
and imperious youth, as eager to murder his brother as 
he had been to shorten his father's life. Geta was brighter, 
gentler, and more cultivated, and the affection of the 
legions for him kept Antoninus in check while they were 
with the army. When they arrived in Rome, their first 
business was the funeral of Severus. His pale wax image 
was laid on a lofty ivory couch, and the black-robed 
Senators and white-clad matrons watched it for seven days. 
Then it was borne to the old Forum, where the chorus of 
sons and women of the nobility sang the old funeral 
chants, and on to the great wooden tower, stuffed with 
spices and inflammable matter, in the Field of Mars ; 
where, from the midst of the flaming pile, the released 
eagle symbolized the passage of the soul of Severus to 
the home of the gods. 

The quarrel between Antoninus and Geta at once broke 
out with greater menace than ever. They kept their 
separate apartments rigidly guarded in the palace, and 
a troop of soldiers and athletes watched day and night 
over the person of the younger Emperor. Some one sug- 
gested that the Empire should be divided, as it was later, 
and that Geta should take the Asiatic half Herodian 
says — though one reads with suspicion his full reports of 
speeches that were made a century before — that Julia 
opposed this plan passionately. They must divide their 



JULIA DOMNA 205 

mother, she declared, before they should divide the Empire. 
The gloom grew deeper over the palace, and the inevitable 
end did not tarry long. Antoninus one day professed that 
he wished to be reconciled, and invited Geta to meet him 
in his mother's room. As soon as Geta entered, the 
officers whom Antoninus had at hand drew their swords. 
Geta flew to his mother's bosom, and she put her arms 
about him ; but they killed him in her embrace, and even 
cut the arm in which she clasped him. Once more the 
channels ran with the best blood of Rome, as Antoninus 
turned vindictively upon the supporters of his brother. 
Even ancient nobles who had survived several of these 
massacres, such as Claudius Pompeianus, the second hus- 
band of Marcus Aurelius's daughter, now came to a violent 
end. The aged sister of Marcus Aurelius, Cornificia, was 
put to death for weeping at the news of the brutal crime. 
Dio assures us that no less than 20,000 men and women, 
including some of the finest of the time, were put to death 
in that awful carnage. Surely one of the chief causes of 
the deterioration of Rome — these repeated purges of its 
best elements — has been overlooked in the endless specu- 
lations about its fall ! 

The " Historia Augusta " tells us that Julia herself was 
discovered in tears by Antoninus, and only escaped death 
because the Emperor feared a rebellion if he killed her. 
Curiously enough, the same historian, and several others, 
go on to give us a far different and less honourable 
account of her conduct after the death of Geta. In the 
general horror with which his abominable deeds were 
contemplated, Antoninus had the astuteness to purchase 
the favour of the army. He bestowed an extraordinary 
donation on the Guards, and entered upon a systematic 
policy of enriching and indulging the troops. From the 
pale faces of the citizens of Rome he retired to the military 
quarters on the Danube, and endeavoured by a year of 
hard hunting and carousing to banish the ghosts which, 
he confessed, haunted him. Inscriptions have been found 
in Germany which suggest that his mother was with him. 



2o6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

However that may be, she joined him when he crossed 
the Hellespont to Asia — and was nearly drowned in the 
passage — and began to take a most important part in the 
administration. With the Senate, over whom he had set 
in authority a Spanish juggler, he was too disdainful to 
deal, except on the most important subjects. His chief 
aim was to wring money out of Rome and the provinces, 
and spend it on the troops. He "plundered the whole 
earth," says Dio. He wore the long rough cloak of a 
Goth — from which he was given the nickname of " Cara- 
calla " (the name of the garment) — and ate the rough food 
of a soldier on campaign ; though he gave himself wildly 
to the luxurious life of the cities of Asia Minor. 

Julia settled in Nicomedia, where she spent a good part 
of 214 and 215, and then in Antioch. Caracalla never 
married again; indeed, there can be little doubt that 
venereal disease was the chief cause of his madness and 
brutality during these years. As a boy, " reared by a 
Christian nurse," says Tertullian, he had been most gentle 
and humane. Julia, therefore, was still Empress, and she 
undertook the greater part of Caracalla's work. All letters 
from Rome were forwarded to her, and she dealt with 
them all, except a few that had to be submitted to the 
Emperor. The inscriptions cut in honour of her during 
these years were remarkably numerous, and from them 
and the coins we learn how great were her authority and 
influence. Her official title grew until it at length became : 
"Julia Pia Felix Augusta, Mater Augusti et Castrorum 
et Senatus et Patriae." All the several epithets that were 
ever bestowed on other Empresses were gathered together 
in her name. 

This intimate association with so foul an Emperor as 
Caracalla lent colour to the current behef that she was 
linked with him in another capacity than that of mother. 
Herodian (iiii), Eutropius (viii), and Aurelius Victor 
(** Epitome," xxi), give the charge as an undoubted fact. 
Spartianus (" Historia Augusta," " Caracalla," x) gives a 
circumstantial story of the mother leading the son astray, 



JUIJA DOMNA 207 

and Aurelius Victor gives the same anecdote in his " De 
Caesaribus," xxi. She is said to have presented herself to 
Caracalla in what Serviez calls " an exceedingly magnifi- 
cent and becoming dress" — se maxima corporis parte de- 
nudassef, is the text — and yielded with ease. The anecdote 
is too common a sample of the salacious gossip of the time 
to be taken seriously, but the substantial charge is not 
so easily set aside. Dio, it is true, does not give it. When 
he speaks (c. 10) of Caracalla having " possessed the 
rascality [iravoOpjov] of his mother," he does not indeed 
pay a tribute to her character, but the word he employs 
seems to indicate craft, perhaps unscrupulous craft, rather 
than lasciviousness. 

But even Dio relates an adventure which fairly shows 
that this grave charge against Julia was widely credited 
in his day. In the year 216, during his tour in the East, 
Caracalla announced that he would honour Alexandria 
with a visit. Unsparing as the Alexandrians had been in 
their witticisms on the ugly, bald, and prematurely old young 
man, with all his brutality and folly, they had no suspicion 
of his real intention, and they prepared to receive him 
with great honour. Once inside their gates, however, he 
savagely precipitated his troops on the unarmed citizens 
and for several days directed the carnage and pillage from 
the temple of Serapis. This savage onslaught is said by 
Dio to have been a punishment for the jibes of the Alex- 
andrians, and we know from Herodian that one of their 
most deadly shafts was to speak of him and his mother as 
(Edipus and Jocaste. 

It cannot therefore be said that Dio is unaware of the 
current belief, nor can we follow Miss Wilkins when she 
suggests that the "elderly Empress " was incapable of such 
conduct. Julia had been married only twenty-nine years 
before, and may very well be presumed to have been in 
her early forties in the year 216. She was in " the full 
flush of life," as Dio expressly says, and is not known to 
have embraced any system of ethics or religion which 
would lay a stigma on incest. But the general moderation 



2o8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

of her career and the repellent character of Caracalla, 
unrelieved by a single grace of person or disposition, must 
weigh heavily in the scale against the gossip of Rome. 

We know, at least, that she endeavoured to curb the 
wild excesses that were bringing a doom on her son and 
endangering the stability of the Empire. When he debased 
the coinage, and despoiled his subjects, she remonstrated, 
but he laughingly drew his sword and said : " Courage, 
mother, while we have this, money will not fail us." "In 
such things," says Dio, "he paid no heed to his mother, 
who gave him much excellent advice." She continued to 
act as the first minister of her son, while he wandered 
from region to region in search of adventure. One of his 
exploits will suffice to illustrate his peculiar method of 
winning glory. From Egypt he advanced against the 
Parthians. He sent a flattering letter to the Parthian 
king, submitting that the two great Empires ought amic- 
ably to divide the world, and asking for the hand of his 
daughter. His persistent lying disarmed even the crafty 
Parthians, and he was admitted into their kingdom with 
a body of troops. He at once flung his troops upon 
the vast unarmed multitude that came out to greet him, 
mingled their blood with the flowers they had strewn 
in his path, and sacked a large part of Medea and Parthia. 

But the end of his infamous life was rapidly approach- 
ing. He had written to Rome, some time previously, to 
direct that the Chaldseans should be consulted as to the 
name of his successor, so that he might slay the man 
named. The minister to whom he wrote had some griev- 
ance against one of the officials in the East, Opilius 
Macrinus, and he wrote to inform Caracalla that Macrinus 
was designated by an African soothsayer. The more 
romantic historians say that this letter reached Caracalla 
just as he was engaged in directing a race, and that he 
gave it, unopened, to Macrinus himself to deal with. More 
plausible is the story related by Dio. The letter went, 
as all letters went, to the Empress at Antioch, and a delay 
was caused. Macrinus had, in the meantime, learned from 



JULIA DOMNA 209 

Rome the danger that threatened him, and he set energetic- 
ally to work. A discontented soldier in Caracalla's body- 
guard was secured, and on the 8th of March, 217, he ended 
that Emperor's infamies with the thrust of a dagger. It 
was a timely release for Rome. It was discovered after 
his death that he had bought great quantities of poison in 
Asia. 

Julia indulged in an unusual display of violence when 
the news reached her at Antioch. She mourned little 
over the removal of her son, says Dio, as she " had hated 
him when he was alive " ; but the prospect of laying down 
her Imperial power, and retiring into private life, in the 
prime of her womanhood, filled her with anger. She 
learned that, after a brief hesitation, Macrinus had promised 
the usual bribe to the troops, and obtained the Empire. 
Rumour quickly recognized in him the assassin of Cara- 
calla, and Julia made the most violent attacks on him. 
Meantime, he had written to assure her that he would 
recognize her Imperial status, and not remove her guard 
of honour. He feared the attachment of the soldiers to 
Caracalla, and disavowed his share in the assassination. 
Julia perceived his weakness, and, abandoning her first 
resolve to take her life by refusing food, she enter- 
tained a hope of unseating the upstart. But the soldiers, 
however much attached to Caracalla, had little idea of 
putting a Semiramis on the throne of Rome. Her plan 
miscarried, and Macrinus heard of her invectives. He 
ordered her to leave Antioch, and go where she willed. 
Her sister and nieces returned to the paternal temple 
at Emesa, where we shall soon rejoin them, but Julia, 
failing entirely to foresee the extraordinary adventure by 
which they would shortly return to power, racked with 
the pain of a cancer, which she had aggravated by a blow 
on the breast in her first anger, decided to leave the 
world. She refused food, and died in May or June, 217. 
Her remains were afterwards buried with great pomp at 
Rome, and her name was added to the quaint list of the 
Imperial gods and goddesses. 
14 



CHAPTER XIII 

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 

THE fates were now preparing as strange a revolution, 
and bringing upon the Imperial stage as grotesque 
a figure, as any that have yet come under our 
notice. Three women — the sister and the nieces of Julia 
Domna — are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed 
with the Imperial dignity, control the fortunes of Rome 
in the extraordinary period that followed it. But before 
we introduce the tragi-comic figure of Elagabalus, we must 
clear the stage of the temporary Emperor and his faint 
shadow of an Empress. 

Opilius Macrinus was a weak, vain, and unimpressive 
old man. Accident had put the Empire within his reach. 
He timidly grasped it because no other offered to do so, 
and held it until another desired it. He was in his fifty- 
third year, a man of obscure African origin, an adventurer 
in the public service. He was married to Nonia Celsa, 
of whom we know only that her qualities were not 
generally believed to include the possession of virtue. 
Their son Diadumenianus was a tall and handsome youth, 
with black eyes and curly yellow hair. When his father 
made him Caesar, and he donned a purple robe, the 
spectators are said to have melted with affection. He 
lived long enough to show, by urging his parents to deal 
more drastically with rebels, that his heart was not so 
tender as his pretty looks had suggested. 

" How happy and fortunate we are/' Macrinus wrote 
to his family, when his accession was secured. In little 



IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 211 

more than a year he would be flying over the hills of 
Asia Minor, and he and his handsome boy would be cruelly 
put to death. He set out at once, with great display, 
against the unruly Parthians. But he soon purchased 
an ignoble peace from them, and repaired to the banquets 
and pleasures of Antioch. Anxious as he was about his 
position, he made the fatal error of keeping the troops 
in camp, and there soon passed from legion to legion an 
ominous murmur. The soldiers contrasted his luxury with 
Caracalla's sharing of their march and their cheese, and 
chafed under the discipline he rightly sought to enforce. 
The rumour spread, too, that Macrinus had given offence 
to the Senate ; and that a mule had borne a mule at Rome, 
and a sow had given birth to a little pig with two heads and 
eight feet. The apparition of a comet and an eclipse of the 
sun made it yet more certain that something was going 
to happen, and confirmed those who were preparing the 
event. In the month of May Macrinus heard that a boy 
of fourteen, supported by three women and a eunuch, had 
claimed the throne, and seduced some troops. He sent a 
general, with a moderate force, to bring him the boy's head. 
In a week or two a messenger returned with a head — his 
general's head. He roused himself from the drowsy luxury 
of Antioch, and set out with his army. 

The three women were, as I have said, Julia Maesa, 
sister of Julia Domna, and her daughters, Soaemias and 
Mamaea. At the death of Julia Domna they had retired 
to the ancestral home at Emesa, in Syria, but with a very 
considerable fortune, which Maesa had gathered at the 
court of Severus and Caracalla. The two daughters seem 
to have lost their husbands, though each had a son. 
Soaemias had a child of fourteen years, named Varius 
Avitus Bassianus, a strikingly pretty boy.^ His cousin 

' It is difficult to imagine Elagabalus beginning his appalling career at 
such an age, and Gibbon, calculating from the age given to Alexander Severus 
in the " Historia Augusta " at the time of his death, changes the age to seven- 
teen. But the " Historia Augusta " is very commonly wrong in the ages it 
ascribes to Emperors at their death. Professor Bury admits that Gibbon is 
probably wrong, and we may follow Herodian, 



212 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Alexianus was three or four years younger. Avitus was 
therefore clothed with the dignity of priest of the temple, 
which seems to have been hereditary, and the little group 
resumed the life they had quitted, twenty years before, to 
dwell in the Imperial court. Maesa, and probably Soaemias, 
found this rustic tranquilHty unendurable, and followed 
political events with interest. The one retained dreams 
of Imperial power, the other of Imperial indulgence. Their 
chief servant was a clever eunuch, Gannys by name, who 
is strangely described by Dio as " practically living with 
Soaemias." A geographical accident brought their vague 
dreams to a practical issue. 

Near the little town of Emesa was a camp of the Roman 
soldiers. Cosmopolitan as they now were in race and 
religion, and fretting at their detention in the dull country- 
side, the soldiers took a close interest in the temple of 
the strange god. The great wealth and fame of the shrine, 
the peculiar nature of its deity and its ritual, often attracted 
them, and the knowledge that these rich and handsome 
women of the priestly family had been so closely connected 
with their popular Caracalla increased the interest. But 
the chief feature that drew their attention was the beauty 
of the young high-priest. The soft and feminine delicacy 
of his form and features was enhanced by a long robe of 
Imperial purple, fringed with gold, and a crown that flashed 
back the rays of the Syrian sun from its precious gems. 
The romance was not lessened when they reflected that 
the great Severus had often fondled this boy in his arms, 
and that he might have inherited the throne. The women, 
or their servants, now doubled the interest of the soldiers 
by insinuating a whisper that he was the son of their 
Caracalla, and when Maesa's gold began to pass freely 
into their purses, they contrived to see a resemblance 
to the dark and repellent features of the late Emperor in 
the girlish beauty of the boy. Soaemias had no difficulty 
in paying the poor price of her reputation for a return to 
court, Lampridius bluntly calls her a meretrix. 

On the night of May 15th, 218, the three women and 



IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 213 

the two boys were transferred to the camp. Maesa's 
fortune went with them, as the price of Empire, and on 
the following day the soldiers announced that Bassianus, 
as he was now called, was Emperor. The camp was 
fortified, and in a few days Macrinus's general, Julianus, 
appeared before it with his troops. Their companions 
in the camp exhibited the young son of Caracalla on the 
rampart, and, as they exhibited also the bags of Maesa's 
gold, they convinced and seduced the assailants. Julianus's 
head was cut off, and sent to Antioch, Macrinus now 
marched against them, and the two armies met in the inter- 
vening country on June 8th. The softened troops wavered 
on both sides, and it looked as if Macrinus might win, when 
Maesa and Soaemias sprang from their chariots in the 
rear of the army, rushed into the ranks, and spurred their 
flagging followers on to victory. Macrinus fled, in an 
ignominious disguise, across the hills and valleys of Asia 
Minor, and within a few weeks Nonia Celsa learned that 
she had lost her throne, her husband, and her boy. The 
Emperor of Rome was the pretty boy-priest of Elagabalus. 
Imperial power, however, meant to the Syrian youth 
an unrestrained indulgence of his sensual dreams, not a 
grave concern with the affairs of a mighty people. He 
dallied in the East, and willingly left his duties to his 
grandmother, while he devoted himself entirely to his 
rights. He gathered about him the ignoble company of 
ministers to lust which the cities of Asia Minor were at 
all times ready to supply, and there was no depth or 
eccentricity of vice in Antioch or Nicomedia which he 
did not explore. Before the end of that year the boy's 
nature was completely perverted, and the last trace of 
masculinity eliminated from it. Maesa was alarmed, for 
the cities of the East were wont to talk freely of the vices 
they implanted or cultivated in their visitors, and the 
sentiment of Rome could not be ignored. But Bassianus 
laughed at her timidity, and lingered throughout the 
following winter in the voluptuous chambers of Nicomedia. 
As to this Roman Senate, of which she spoke, he sent the 



214 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

grey-beards a painting of himself in his flowing sacerdotal 
robes and womanly jewels, to be placed over the altar 
of Victory in their meeting-place. 

In the following spring he condescended to visit the 
capital of his Empire. Rome had received many a strange 
procession during the centuries of its Imperial expansion, 
but no spectacle had aroused so much curiosity as the 
arrival of the young monarch on whose picture the 
Senators had gazed with bewilderment. The original was 
even more extraordinary than the portrayal. For the entry 
into Rome the young priest-Emperor stained his cheeks 
with vermilion, and artfully enhanced the brilliance of his 
eyes, like a Syrian courtesan or an actress. He wore his 
loose robes of purple silk trimmed with gold, his delicate 
arms were encircled with costly bracelets and his white 
neck with a string of pearls, and a tiara of successive 
crowns, flashing with jewels, surmounted his strange figure. 
And, as the alternative and real power in administration, 
the Romans regarded with anxiety the two women who 
rode with him — the grave and dignified Maesa, and the 
richly sensuous and evil-famed Soaemias. There is in 
the Vatican Museum a statue of the mother of Elagabalus 
as she appeared at this time. She has chosen' to be 
portrayed in the costume, or lack of costume, of Venus; 
and the voluptuous body and soft round limbs, the low 
forehead, thick lips, and large nose, combined with the hard 
and shameless expression, reconcile us to the coarsest 
epithets the historians have attached to her memory. 

To the horror of the Senate this woman was at once 
associated with him in a character that no Empress, or 
no woman, had ever assumed in the long history of Rome. 
At his first visit to the Senate the Emperor demanded 
that she should be invited to sit by his side and listen to 
their deliberations. Even Livia had been content to listen 
behind the decent shade of a curtain. Soaemias, however, 
had not the wit or seriousness to interfere in anj' way. 
She was appointed president of the Senaculum, or ** Little 
Senate," of women, which Sabina had founded, and Julia re- 




JULIA M^SA 

BUST IN THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, ROME 



IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 215 

stored, in the Forum of Trajan ; and she found an easier and 
more congenial occupation in, controlling the grave delibera- 
tions of the matrons of Rome on questions of etiquette, 
precedence, costume, and jewellery. It was left to Maesa 
to wield the political power, and she did so with sobriety 
and judgment. Unhappily, the Emperor was more willing 
to listen to the easier counsels of his mother than to Maesa, 
and he began at once to entertain or disgust Rome with 
the appalling license which makes his short reign an in- 
describable nightmare. 

He had brought from Emesa the celestial stone, the 
emblem of Ela-gabal, to which all his prosperity was 
due, and his first care was to provide the god with a 
worthy home. A magnificent temple was raised to it, 
and the stone, encrusted with gems, was borne to it on 
a chariot drawn by six white horses, the Emperor walking 
backwards before it in an ecstasy of adoration. In the 
temple a number of altars were set up, and rivers of 
blood — even the blood of children — were poured out on 
them ; while the Emperor and his family croned the barbaric 
chants of primitive Syria, and the highest dignitaries of 
Rome stood in silent respect. As the earlier officials were 
soon replaced by men of infamy, chosen, very frequently, 
on a qualification that one may not describe, we need pay 
little attention to their feelings. If we suppose that the 
Emperor, or Elagabalus, as he now called himself, was 
aware that the conical stone was really a phallic emblem, 
we may find a clue to some of the stranger vagaries of 
his erotomania. 

-Rome had long been accustomed to the barbarism of 
the more ancient Oriental cults, and had indeed taken a 
willing part in the orgiastic processions of the mysterious 
Mother of the Gods, whenever their rulers permitted 
them. But the security of the Empire seemed to them 
in danger when Elagabalus went on to place every other 
idol in a position of subordinate respect in the temple of 
his fetich. Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and Mars, were not at 
that time favoured very widely with a literal belief; nor 



2i6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

were the Romans concerned when he stole the Astarte 
of the Carthaginians, and married her, in a magnificent 
festival, to his lonely deity. The temples and cults of 
Rome were like the temples and cults of modern Japan. 
They contributed to the gaiety of life. But if there was 
Ittle sincere polytheism at Rome — the educated world 
was divided between an Epicurean Agnosticism and an 
eclectic Monotheism — there was much superstition, and few 
could regard without concern a desecration of the ancient 
Palladium, or statue in the temple of Vesta, to which the 
fortune of the city was peculiarly attached, and other 
ancient emblems. Elagabalus despotically overrode their 
feelings. He broke forcibly into the home of the Vestal 
Virgins, and bore away the sacred Palladium ; since we 
may regard the later boast of the Virgins, that they cheated 
him with a substituted statue, as insincere. 

Of the Empresses whom he made by marriage we 
have little knowledge. In less than three years he married, 
and unmarried, either four or five women. The first was 
Julia Cornelia Paula, a woman of very distinguished 
family and, if we may trust the bust in the Louvre, a 
woman of dignity, refinement, and some strength of 
character. We may see the action of Maesa in the choice. 
A few months later he divorced her and, to the horror 
of Rome, married one of the Vestal Virgins. Possibly the 
beauty of Julia Aquilia Severa had caught his fancy when 
he broke into their sacred enclosure. The Senators were 
deeply concerned at this sacrilege, for the fate of Rome 
was still closely connected with the integrity of the noble 
virgins who tended the undying fire before the altar of 
Vesta. Elagabalus, who, it was generally known, had no 
hope of progeny, brazenly argued with the Senate that 
he was consulting the future of the State, since a union 
of priest and priestess gave promise of a family of divine 
children. In any case, he said, he was a maker, not an 
observer, of laws ; and he established Severa in his palace. 
The coins give her the title of Augusta. 

His roving eye soon afterwards was attracted by the 



IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 217 

charms of Annia Faustina, the great-granddaughter of 
Marcus Aurelius. The portrait-bust of her in the Capitol 
Museum has a round full face of great beauty and an 
expression of sweetness and modesty. She seems to 
have escaped the taint of the Faustinae. She was married 
to Pomponius Bassus, and Elagabalus released her by the 
familiar device of executing her husband, and transferred 
her, leaving no time for mourning, to the palace. Her 
beauty seems to have been too tempered with refinement 
to engage his affections long. She was dismissed, and 
replaced by some unknown victim. Then Elagabalus 
returned to his priestess of Vesta. In all, he seems to 
have married four women in three years, not counting 
Severa, whose marriage Dio does not seem to regard as 
valid. 

Severa was the chief associate of his life in the palace, 
and it is quite impossible to convey an impression of the 
sordid scenes into which she had passed from the austere 
sanctuary of Vesta. Twelve condensed pages of the 
" Historia Augusta" are occupied with his enormities, and 
at the close of what is probably the most appalling picture 
of unrestrained license in any literature — even if we admit 
exaggeration — Lampridius assures us that he has, from a 
feeling of modesty, omitted the worst details. It would 
seem that the human imagination, in its most diseased 
condition, could devise nothing lower. We do not know 
whether Severa was an Octavia or a Poppaea, but the cir- 
cumstance that she consented to live is grave enough. In 
that vast colony of vice, to which a system of pandars, 
spread over the Empire, dispatched every man who had 
some special physical or moral feature to fit him for the 
orgies, no decent woman would have clung to mortality. 
A Caesonia or a Marcia might laugh when Elagabalus 
returned at night, dressed as a common female tavern- 
keeper, from the low wine-shops in which he had been 
rioting— might even smile when she saw Elagabalus's 
" husband," a burly slave, beating and bruising him for his 
infidelity, or when she heard at night the rattle of the 



2i8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

golden rings and the shameful appeal of the new Messalina 
behind his curtain — but Severa was of noble birth, the 
daughter of a man who had twice been consul. 

One of the unpardonable sins of Rome was that it 
hesitated so long to assassinate some of its rulers. The 
very excesses of Elagabalus protected him for a long 
time, as he urged the people to share or imitate his 
pleasures. No screen was drawn about his vices. He 
would discuss them with the Senate, or collect all the 
meretrices of Rome in a hall, and address them on those 
various schemes of vice which we find to-day depicted 
on the walls of the lupanar in Pompeii. He would invite 
the common folk to come and drink with him at the palace, 
where they might see the furniture of solid silver, the beds 
loaded with roses and hyacinths, the swimming-baths of 
perfume, the gold dust strewn in the colonnades, the paths 
paved with porphyry. He provided for them the spectacle 
of naval battles in lakes of wine, and a mountain of snow, 
brought from the remote mountains, in the middle of 
summer. But his chief device for cajoling the citizens 
was to distribute tickets, as for a lottery, and see them 
press for the sight of the gifts corresponding to their 
numbers. You might get ten eggs or ten ostriches, ten 
flies or ten camels, ten toy balloons or ten pounds of gold ; 
and the mania grew until your chance lay between a dead 
dog, a slave, a richly caparisoned horse, a chariot, or a 
hundred pounds of gold. At times he would invite a 
crowd to dinner, and smother them, with fatal effect to 
some, under a thick shower of flowers ; or seat them on 
inflated bags, which slaves would deflate in the middle 
of the banquet; or have them borne away intoxicated at 
the end, to find themselves in the morning sleeping with 
bears or lions. 

The frivolous Romans were so much entertained by 
these vagaries that they overlooked his personal luxury, 
and made no inquiry into the state of the treasury. No 
dinner could be placed before him that had not cost thirty 
pounds of silver. Robed in a tunic of pure gold or pure 



IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 219 

Chinese silk, sitting under perfumed lamps, amid masses 
of the choicest blooms, he picked delicately at the tongues 
of larks and peacocks, the brains of thrushes, the eggs of 
pheasants, the heads of parrots, or the heels of camels. 
He fed his horses with choice grapes and his lions with 
pheasants. His chariots were of gold only, studded with 
gems, and they were drawn through the streets by strings 
of nude women, or by stags. Delicate in every detail, 
he had cords of silk and swords of gold prepared for 
inflicting death on himself in case of need. He little knew 
that he would die in the latrine of the soldiers* camp. 

Soaemias seems to have enjoyed this orgiastic life, but 
the more prudent Maesa was concerned. Finding that 
remonstrances were quite useless, she cunningly persuaded 
Elagabalus to associate his cousin with him in the govern- 
ment, Alexander — as Alexianus had now been named — 
was three or four years younger than the Emperor, and did 
not share his disease. His mother, Mamaea, inherited the 
prudence and sobriety of Maesa, and guarded her boy from 
the contamination with the utmost care. His excellent 
disposition ensured the success of their plan, and Elagabalus 
began to perceive that the younger boy was winning a 
dangerous popularity. It is said that a judicious distribu- 
tion of money by Mamaea fostered the growing esteem for 
him, especially among the soldiers. 

From suspicion Elagabalus passed to hatred, and from 
hatred to a design on his cousin's life. Mamaea secured 
the favour of the guards with great adroitness, and watched 
the actions of Elagabalus. He first, in order to test public 
feeling, sent word to the Senate and the camp that he had 
withdrawn the title of Caesar from his cousin; and he 
directed that the boy should be put to death if this 
announcement created no disorder. In the anxious hour 
that followed, Alexander waited in a room of the palace 
with his trembling mother and Maesa ; Elagabalus went 
down to the gardens to supervise the preparations for a 
chariot-race, and await impatiently the news that his cousin 
was dead. Presently a tumultuous crowd of the guards 



220 THE EMPRESSES OF-ROME 

rushed across the city, and burst into the gardens of the 
palace. Elagabalus fled to his room, and covered himself 
with a curtain ; and the soldiers conveyed the two women 
and the boy in triumph to the camp, many of them remain- 
ing in the garden to threaten Elagabalus. 

Soaemias, seeing the Empire slip from her, awoke to 
energetic action. She hastened on foot to the camp, and 
pleaded passionately for her son. They did not wish to 
take his life, the guards said, but must have a security 
for the life of Alexander and a promise of reform. They 
returned to the gardens, and the young autocrat, in his 
purple silks and jewelled shoes, had to plead with the 
rough soldiers to spare the favourite ministers of his 
vices. He had filled the highest posts with men whose 
only qualifications were such that we cannot describe 
them, and his army of attendants were the scum of the 
Empire. The guards forced him to dismiss the most 
obnoxious, preached him an inglorious sermon on his 
infamies, and directed their officers to watch over the life 
of Alexander. 

The swords of gold and the cords of variegated silk 
were not employed, but Elagabalus could never forgive 
the degradation he had experienced. He made several 
attempts to remove the obstacles to his design : sent the 
Senate from Rome, and removed or executed several of 
the soldiers. Mamsea watched him assiduously, and Maesa 
easily penetrated his secrets. Not a particle of food or 
drink from the Imperial kitchen was allowed to pass the 
lips of Alexander. Rome knew that the end was near. It 
was only a few years since Bassianus and Geta had dis- 
graced the palace with a similar quarrel. Maesa attempted 
in vain to conciliate them. On January ist, 222, they were 
both to receive the consular dignity from the Senate. 
She had to threaten Elagabalus with a fresh mutiny of the 
guards before he would go. 

Some ten weeks later the feud came to a crisis. Ela- 
gabalus, to test the soldiers, sets afoot a rumour that 
Alexander is dead. The guards, believing the rumour, 



IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 221 

withdraw their contingent from the palace, and shut them- 
selves in the camp. Elagabalus takes his cousin in his 
golden chariot to the camp, to show that the rumour is 
false, and loses control of himself when the guards burst 
into exclamations of joy at the sight of Alexander. Mamsea 
and Soaemias come upon the scene, and an angry alterca- 
tion follows, each mother making a wild appeal to the 
soldiers. Either there is a division of feeling among the 
soldiers, or some of Elagabalus's ministers are present, 
for swords are drawn and are soon at work. Elagabalus 
and Soaemias, the Sybarites, rush into the latrine of the 
camp for safety, and are slain there by the guards. Their 
bodies are disdainfully thrown out to the mob, who have 
gathered outside. The effeminate frame of the young 
Emperor, with its soft limbs and large pendent breasts, 
and the voluptuous body of his mother, are dragged through 
the streets, and, as the opening of the sewer is too narrow 
to receive them, they are thrown into the Tiber. And the 
cry of " Ave, Imperator ! " rings in the ears of Mamaea and 
her boy. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 

TO the thoughtful Roman the name of Syria must have 
suggested an abyss of corruption, and the extension 
of the Empire over that swarm of Asiatic peoples 
to whom the name was vaguely applied must have seemed 
an infelicitous triumph. From the cities of nearer Asia, in 
which the senile energies of the older civilizations seemed 
incapable of rising above the ministry to vice, luxury, and 
folly, had come the larger part of the taint that had infected 
the blood of Rome. It is therefore singular to observe 
that, of the five women whom Syria placed on, or above, 
the Roman throne in the third century, four were dis- 
tinguished for sobriety of judgment and concern for the 
common weal. The family from which the first four of 
these women sprang is variously described as " humble " 
and "noble." We may reconcile the epithets by a con- 
jecture that the family which controlled the wealthy shrine 
of Emesa descended from some branch of the fallen nobility 
of the East. Both Soaemias and Mamsea had married 
Syrians, and we may assume that Mamaea had done the 
same. In those circumstances, the public spirit with which 
Julia Domna, Julia Maesa, and Julia Mamaea used the great 
influence they had is not a little remarkable. 

Of the three — to whom we must presently add a fourth 
remarkable woman of the East — Mamaea had the greatest 
power, and made the best use of it. She is not blameless, 
as we shall see ; but even if it be true, as is commonly said, 
that she was unduly covetous of money and power, we 

222 



ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 223 

must at least admit that she employed them solely to restore 
peace and prosperity to the Empire, and prolong the reign 
of a high-principled ruler. 

Mamaea entered upon her work with all the shrewdness 
which we have already recognized in her. Instead of 
claiming the right, which Soaemias had enjoyed, to sit in 
the Senate and sign its decrees, she preserved a discreet 
silence when the Senate abolished the innovation, and 
poured out their long-repressed annoyance on the memory 
of its author. The Senators ostentatiously enjoyed their 
shadow of power : Mamaea quietly possessed the substance. 
She provided the finest preceptors for the education of 
her son Alexander, who was in his fourteenth year, and 
selected sixteen of the most distinguished Senators and 
lawyers as a Council of State. With these she worked 
energetically and harmoniously for the renovation of the 
Empire. The palace was purged of the quaint and the 
loathsome officers that she found in it, Rome was relieved 
of Ela-gabal and his ghastly ritual, competent officials were 
substituted for the ministers to the lust of the late Emperor, 
and the heavier taxes of the previous two reigns were 
remitted or lessened. In this work, which extends over 
the thirteen years of the reign of Alexander Severus, Maesa 
had little part. She died soon after the beginning of this 
happier era, and Mamaea alone guided the willing hands 
of her son. It is remarked by all the authorities that 
Alexander was singularly subservient to his mother. 

Troops and Senate had been happily united in the 
elevation of Alexander, and all the epithets of Imperial 
dignity were at once conferred on him. The title of 
Severus he accepted from the soldiers, but he declined 
the name of Antoninus, which the Senate pressed on him, 
since that revered name had been so impiously disgraced 
by his predecessors. He spontaneously discarded the 
womanly silks and jewels of his cousin, covered the rough 
shirts of Severus with the Roman toga, and gave equal 
attention to manly exercises, the lessons of his tutors, and 
the wise counsels of his mother. He thus grew into a 



224 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

handsome and virile youth, with the piercing black eyes 
of his race, but with a moderation of temper that delighted 
his Stoic teachers. When we read the account of his career 
in the " Historia Augusta " — an account that might have 
been written by a Xenophon or a Fenelon for the edifica- 
tion of a young prince — we are tempted to feel that, either 
the gossipy Lampridius had for the moment a more serious 
object than the entertainment of Rome, or Alexander 
Severus was more virtuous than the circumstances re- 
quired. 

Mamaea is described by the same writer as " holy, but 
avaricious." Avarice was a not inopportune vice. Ela- 
gabalus had squandered the treasury on his foUies ; the 
troops, encouraged by him and by Caracalla, were becoming 
more and more exacting ; while Mamaea had, by lightening 
the taxes, spared the Empire a substantial share of its 
contribution. In these circumstances it was prudent to 
cultivate a close concern about money, and no single writer 
ventures to say that the Empress— the Senate had at once 
entitled her Augusta — spent much on her personal service 
or pleasure. It is said that her zeal for the accumulation 
of money was carried to a stage of offensiveness. But it 
was necessary for her murderers to detect or invent some 
vice in extenuation of their foul deed, and the position in 
which the charge is found in the historians reveals that it 
came from that tainted source. " Avarice " means little 
more than that she would not yield to the improper 
demands of a demoralized army. 

When we reflect that both her parents were Syrians, 
we notice with some surprise that the portrait-bust of 
Mamaea has a singularly Roman face ; and in her strength, 
solidity, and sobriety she recalls the old Roman t37pe rather 
than accords with the general conception of a Syrian 
woman. She had the defect of her type, and an incident 
that occurred early in her reign is regarded as a grave 
betrayal of it. It is not at all clear, however, that Mamaea 
acted with the "jealous cruelty" which Gibbon sees in her 
conduct. For the wife of her son she had chosen Sallustia 



ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 225 

Barbia Orbiana — we find the name on coins, though the 
historians do not give it — daughter of the Senator 
Sallustius Macrinus. Alexander, not an exacting husband, 
seems to have lived happily with his bride, and her father 
was promoted to the rank of Caesar, Before long, however, 
we find Macrinus executed on a charge of treason, and his 
daughter banished to Africa, 

Gibbon believes, on the authority of Dio, that this was 
entirely due to Mamaea's unwillingness to share the power 
and the affection of her son with another woman. The 
word of an historian and a member of the Senate, whom 
we may almost describe as an eye-witness, must assuredly 
have weight, yet we cannot ignore the assertion of the 
other authorities that Macrinus was betrayed into acts 
which easily bore the construction of treason. We may 
recall Merivale's just warning, on another occasion, that 
a contemporary Roman writer is particularly apt to re- 
produce the unsubstantial gossip of his day, Herodian, 
who nevertheless believes that Macrinus had no treasonable 
intention, says that Mamaea was so cruel to Orbiana that 
the girl went in tears to her father, and he repaired to the 
Praetorian camp with bitter complaints against Mamaea, 
Such a course very strongly suggests a treasonable design. 
The troops, chafing under the rule of Mamaea and her son, 
whom they eventually murdered, were notoriously dis- 
contented ; and flying to the camp was commonly the first 
overt act in a plot to displace the ruling Emperor. When 
we further find that Lampridius (" Historia Augusta") says, 
on the authority of Dexippus, an Athenian writer of the 
succeeding generation, that Macrinus was expressly at- 
tempting to replace Alexander, we must at least suspend 
our censures. We know nothing of the character of 
Macrinus and his daughter, and are therefore unable to 
say how far Mamaea's interpretation of their conduct may 
have been influenced by her feelings, and how far her 
harsh treatment of Orbiana may have been justified. 

The charge against her is further weakened by a 
circumstance that Gibbon has overlooked.^ Lampridius 
IS 



226 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

says that Alexander married Memnia, the daughter of the 
ex-consul Sulpicius, and speaks incidentally of "his boys." 
It seems, then, that the jealousy of Mamaea did not prevent 
Alexander from marrying again, and that Memnia must 
have shared the palace with the Empress-mother for a 
number of years. Of her character we know nothing, 
except that, together with Mamaea, she remonstrated with 
Alexander on account of his excessive affability with his 
subjects. No guards, it seems, barred the entrance of the 
palace against them. The austere character of the life 
which adorned it was the only test of the integrity of those 
who approached him. After a day of exertion he would 
spend the evening in the refining enjoyment of letters or 
the exercise of his musical skill. He sang and played well, 
but guarded his Imperial dignity by admitting none to hear 
him except his young sons. Actors and gladiators he 
avoided, nor would he spend much in exhibiting their 
skill to the public. His one luxury was a remarkable 
collection of birds, which included 20,000 doves ; his one 
weakness a delight in the puny and almost bloodless 
combats of partridges, kittens, or pups. His baths were of 
cold water, and his table was regulated by the most minute 
directions, admitting even the slight luxury of a goose only 
on festive occasions. When a string of costly pearls was 
presented to Memnia, he ordered that they should be sold, 
and, when no purchaser could be found in Rome, he hung 
them upon the statue of Venus in the temple. 

From such details as these we may construct a picture 
of the quiet and temperate life of Alexander's palace, and 
we shall be disposed to think lightly of the quarrels which 
are said to have disturbed the relations of mother and son. 
We can hardly believe that one so frugal as Alexander 
would profess much indignation at his mother's assiduous 
nursing of the treasury, nor can we suppose that Mamaea 
greatly resented the young monarch's accessibility to his 
subjects. Their frugality, indeed, must not be exaggerated, 
as they were generous in gifts. Instead of sending men to 
extort their incomes from the provinces in which they took 




JULIA MAMiEA 

BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 



ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 227 

office, Alexander provided them, when they left Rome, 
with an outfit so complete as to include a concubine. His 
deference to his mother may, in fact, be said to be the only 
consistent charge against him. The Emperor Julian (" The 
Caesars ") insinuates that he showed a mediocrity of intelli- 
gence in allowing his mother to accumulate money, instead 
of prudently spending it. In a sense Julian was right; 
though it was not weakness of intelligence, but severity of 
principle, that restrained Alexander and Mamsea from this 
prudent expenditure. Had they lavished their funds upon 
the troops, the history of Rome during the next ten years 
might have run differently. 

From .an early period in the reign of Alexander the 
attitude of the troops cast a shadow over the palace and 
the Empire. Five successive Emperors, besides earlier 
ones, had received the purple from the hands of the troops, 
and had been compelled either to refrain from pressing the 
necessary discipline upon them, or to compensate the 
rigours of discipline with excessive rewards. The soldiers 
became conscious of their power, and sufficiently demoral- 
ized to abuse it. Less exercise and more pay led to a 
lamentable enervation ; and the filling of the ranks from 
the more distant peoples, who had not contributed to the 
making of the Empire and were insensible to its prestige, 
dissolved in the legions the old spirit of nationality. From 
the lonely forests, the frozen hills, or the blistering deserts 
of the frontiers, they sought ever to be withdrawn to the 
comforts and pleasures of the cities. And when they found 
that a fresh effort was being made to restrict their indul- 
gences and restore the earlier discipline, when they reflected 
that it was only the feeble hands of a woman and a youth 
that would enforce this austerity, they broke into sullen 
murmurs of discontent. 

The most dangerous part of the army was the extensive 
regiment of Praetorian Guards, which, from its camp at the 
walls, overshadowed Rome with its power. Over these 
men Mamaea had placed a civilian, the distinguished jurist 
Domitius Ulpianus. It was natural that Ulpian should 



228 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

wish to extend to the guards the valuable reforms which 
he was introducing into every department of the State ; 
equally natural that the soldiers should chafe under his 
discipline. The citizens took the part of Ulpian and 
Mamaea, who protected him, and the irritation at last 
erupted in a bloody struggle, in which the populace fought 
for three days against the soldiers in the streets of Rome. 
The quarrel was arrested, but some time afterwards — not 
in the fight, as Gibbon says — the angry guards put an end 
to the reforms of Ulpian. The statesman fled before them 
into the palace, and sought the protection of the Emperor ; 
but the insolent guards penetrated the sanctuary of the 
royal house with drawn swords, and murdered, in 
Alexander's presence, the most eminent and enlightened of 
his counsellors. The provincial troops were giving little 
less concern. We take our leave at this stage of the 
historian Dio. His work closes with a mournful lament 
of the condition of the army, and a just presentiment of 
impending calamity. He too had endeavoured to enforce 
discipline on the legions, and had found the authority of 
the Emperor insufficient to protect him from their murder- 
ous resentment. 

As if this lamentable situation had been communicated 
to the countless peoples who pressed eagerly against the 
barriers of the Empire, we find a new boldness arising 
amongst them, and a serious beginning of those raids which 
will at last put the mighty power under the heel of the 
barbarian. The tragedy of the fall of Rome reaches a more 
certain stage. It is a singular and melancholy reflection 
that Rome suffered most under its most virtuous rulers. 
During the reign of Marcus Aurelius the gods had seemed 
to make a war upon virtue. The new Stoic and his virtuous 
mother were destined to see the enemies gathering fiercely 
about their enfeebled frontiers, and to perish tragically in 
a futile effort to repel them. 

The gravest trouble arose in the East. The ancient 
kingdom of Persia revived, and its vigorous rulers deter- 
mined to regain the provinces which Greece and Rome had 



ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 229 

shorn from their once vast empire. Alexander, and prob- 
ably Mamaea, went to the East. If we may believe the 
panegyrist of Alexander in the " Historia Augusta," he dis- 
played an admirable firmness in enforcing discipline upon 
the troops when he arrived at Antioch. Gathering their 
sullen and spoiled officers from the haunts of Antioch and 
the licentious groves of the suburb of Daphne, he punished 
a number of them severely, boldly confronted the drawn 
swords of their demoralized followers, and set the legions 
in motion against the Persians. But the plan of the 
campaign was injudicious, and the execution weak. The 
Romans suffered a heavy reverse, and, before they could 
recover and check the advancing spirit of the Persians, 
Alexander was recalled to Europe with the news that the 
Germanic tribes were bursting through the northern 
frontier. 

From the sunny lands of their native East the Emperor 
and his mother passed, in the year 234, to the banks of the 
Rhine. They had passed through Rome, where the citizens 
were easily persuaded to celebrate his triumph over the 
Persians. From the Capitol they had carried the young 
Emperor on their shoulders to his palace, his chariot with 
its four elephants walking behind them, and a great wave 
of enthusiasm went with him as he started for Gaul. He 
was now in his twenty-sixth year, and Mamaea must have 
felt that he was at the beginning of a glorious career. 
They little suspected that they were going to meet their 
deaths at the hands of their own troops. 

One of the commanders on the Rhine was a gigantic 
and powerful barbarian, half Goth and half Alan, of the 
name of Maximinus. More than eight feet in height, with 
a thumb so large that he wore his wife's bracelet on it as a 
ring, the giant had made his way in the army by sheer 
strength. A man who could eat forty pounds of meat in a 
day, drink a proportionate quantity of wine, and fell you 
with a finger, had the respect of the barbarian soldiers. 
Elagabalus had repelled him, when he sought office, with 
salacious questions about his strength ; Alexander had 



230 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

eagerly welcomed him, and put him in command of the 
younger troops. But Alexander had afterwards refused 
him an honour, which Mamaea desired to confer on him, 
and he probably heard this. He had given his son a good 
Roman education, and Mamaea thought that the young 
man was a suitable match for her daughter Theoclea. 
Alexander protested that his sister would find the father- 
in-law too boorish, and the young Maximinus, now a tall, 
handsome, cultivated, and dissolute noble, married a grand- 
daughter of Antoninus Pius, Junia Fadilla. 

Whether this affront was remembered, or whether 
Maximinus acted from mere ambition, we cannot say. He 
began, in any case, to spread discontent in the army. 
When Alexander practically bought peace from the bar- 
barians, instead of conducting a vigorous campaign against 
them, the whispers were changed into open murmuring. 
These effeminate Syrians, it was said, were unable to 
endure the sturdy North, and were eager to return to the 
East. The Emperor was a maudlin youth, who could not 
act without his mother's permission. He had abandoned 
the war against Persia in order to return to her side, and 
he was again sacrificing the honour of Rome out of regard 
for her comfort. Her palace at Rome was full of hoarded 
treasure, while the hard-worked soldiers were insufficiently 
paid. These complaints circulated freely in the camp 
during the long German winter. A lavish distribution of 
money might have defeated the plot of Maximinus, and a 
speedy retirement to Rome would certainly have saved the 
lives of the Emperor and Empress. But they remained in 
camp until the middle of March, 235, and then the end 
came. 

They were at, or in the neighbourhood of, the small 
frontier town which is now known as Mainz. One morn- 
ing, when Maximinus rode out to control the exercises, he 
was greeted with the name of Emperor. He feigned sur- 
prise and reluctance, but the soldiers — probably in pursuance 
of an arranged plan — drew their swords, and threatened 
to kill him if he did not take the power from the hands of 



ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 231 

the effeminate Syrians. He consented, promised a liberal 
donation in honour of his accession, and said that all 
punishments that had been inflicted on the soldiers would 
be remitted. He then led them toward the tent of Alex- 
ander. The young Emperor came out to meet them, and 
made an appeal that seems to have divided the followers of 
the usurper, as they went away to their tents. At night, 
however, the guards at the Imperial tent announced that 
the mutinous troops were gathering about it. Alexander 
rushed out, and called upon the loyal soldiers to defend 
him, making a tardy promise of money and concessions. 
Many of them came to his side, but at last the massive 
figure of Maximinus was seen to approach at the head of 
a strong body of troops. For the last time the soldiers 
were urged to choose between the strong, generous man 
and the avaricious woman and her child. Alexander saw 
the faithful few pass sullenly to the side of Maximinus, and 
he returned to his tent. It is said that the last moments 
were spent in a violent quarrel between mother and son 
about the responsibility for the disaster. There was little 
time for it. The soldiers of Maximinus entered at once, 
and slew Mamaea, Alexander, and their few remaining 
friends. 

A popular and spirited work of the fourth century 
described " the deaths of the persecutors," or the terrible 
fate which befell every Emperor who persecuted the 
Christians. No fate in the terrible series of Imperial 
calamities was so tragic as that of Alexander, though he 
had favoured the Christians, and had cherished a bust of 
Christ among those of the heroes and sages in his lararium. 
No other Empress in the long line of murdered women so 
little deserved a violent death as Julia Mamaea. During 
the fourteen years of her son's reign she had solely studied 
the welfare of the Empire. The one charge that her 
murderers could bring against her was that she had 
hoarded money instead of spending it on, or giving it to, 
the troops. On public buildings, public works, and civic 
administration she had spent freely; she, or Alexander, 



232 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

had even expended large sums in providing surer susten- 
ance and more effective transport for the troops themselves. 
The charge is little, if at all, more than a cowardly subter- 
fuge. But it needed half-a-dozen strong and unselfish 
generals to restore the efficiency and docility of the legions, 
and they were not to be found. We pass into a period of 
anarchy, in which Emperors and Empresses rise and wither 
like mushrooms, and Rome stumbles blindly onward to- 
wards its doom. In that period of confusion, when every 
section of the army makes its Emperor, only two dominant 
personalities are found, and they are two Empresses of 
barbaric origin. 



CHAPTER XV 

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 

THE Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother were 
murdered in the year 235, We may convey a just 
impression of the period that followed this odious 
crime by the brief observation that in forty years nearly 
forty Emperors appeared on the darkened stage of the 
Roman Empire, and that nearly every one of them perished 
at the hands of Roman soldiers. The anarchy was arrested 
for a time when, in the year 270, the energetic Aurelian 
came to the throne. People and Senate greeted the strong 
man with genuine enthusiasm, and among the cries of joy 
or hope with which the Senators hailed him we find this 
singular aspiration : " Thou wilt deliver us from Zenobia 
and Vitruvia." It is a piquant contrast with the disdain 
that their fathers had had for women — a confession that 
their vast Empire was now dominated by two women, 
without male consorts. But for the timely appearance 
of Aurelian there was a prospect that they would divide 
the rule of the world between them. One was a Syrian, 
the other a Gallic, queen; but each of them bore the title 
of Augusta, and they are the next commanding personalities 
to engage our interest. 

Many years were to elapse between the death of 
Mamaea and the appearance of these two remarkable 
women, but we need do no more than glance at the many 
Empresses of an hour whose names are hardly discernible 
in that turbulent era. The huge barbarian who had pur- 
chased the throne by a brutal murder did not long enjoy 

333 



234 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

it. The Empire heard with horror and disdain that this 
Thracian shepherd had seized the mantle of Antoninus 
and Marcus. The people of Rome, in particular, recol- 
lected with alarm the contempt they had shown him in 
his earlier years, and offered prayer in the temples that 
the gods might divert his steps from the south of Italy. 
He met their disdain with vindictiveness, and ruthlessly 
executed those who remembered his humble origin, or 
whose wealth could add to his revenue. His Empress, 
Paulina, vainly endeavoured to restrain his bloody hand, 
and succeeded only in drawing it upon herself.^ At length 
his exactions struck a spark of rebellion in Africa, and a 
new Emperor was appointed. 

The African Proconsul, Gordianus, was an excellent 
Epicurean of the fine old Roman type. He had wealth, 
culture, character, and taste. After filling the highest 
offices at Rome with grace and applause, he was now 
quietly discharging the duties of Proconsul, and relieving 
the long hours of leisure with a tranquil enjoyment of 
letters, at the little town of Thysdrus, about a hundred 
and fifty miles to the south of Carthage. With him in 
Africa was his son Gordianus, an epicure rather than an 
Epicurean, who solaced his exile from Rome with the 
engaging company of twenty-two ladies. Their respective 
pleasures were violently interrupted in the beginning of 
the year 238. The father, a white-haired old man, with 
broad red face, was resting in his house after his judicial 
labours, when a band of men, with blood-smeared swords, 
burst into the luxurious villa, told him that they had 
rebelled against the tyrant, and peremptorily informed him 
that he was Emperor. His objections were unheeded, 
and he set out, with misgiving, for Carthage. But the 
pride of the Carthaginians was quickly chilled by the 
news that Maximinus's commander in Africa was advancing 
against their city. An armed force was hastily equipped, 
sent out under the lead of the younger Gordian, and cut 

' Ammianus Marcellinus tells us the one fact, Zosimus the other. 
Neither mentions her name, but we learn it from coins. 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 235 

to pieces. The younger Emperor had died on the field : 
the white-haired old man hanged himself. 

Rome, meantime, had recognized the rule of the 
Gordians, and was now throbbing with a just apprehension 
of the vengeance of Maximinus. The certainty of punish- 
ment inspired it with a measure of courage, and two new 
Emperors were created — a vigorous son of the people, 
Pupienus Maximus, and a perfumed representative of the 
nobles, Balbinus. The choice did not please the people, 
who beset the Senate with sticks and stones, so a hand- 
some boy, such as Rome loved, was associated with them. 
He was a Gordianus, the fourteen-year-old son of the elder 
Gordian's daughter. The city rang with preparations for 
war, and in the early summer Maximus led out his weak 
and apprehensive force. The terrible Maximinus and his 
legions had crossed the Alps, and were descending on the 
plains of Italy. Luckily for Rome, they met a desperate 
resistance at Aquileia. Protected by strong and well- 
equipped fortifications, with ample provisions, the in- 
habitants repelled the fiercest attacks of Maximinus, 
and jeered at him and his dissolute son from the walls. 
When the thongs of their slinging-machines wore out, 
the women of Aquileia gave their long tresses to the 
soldiers to weave into cords. Maximinus vented his 
temper on his own troops, and one morning the besieged 
were delighted to see the soldiers advancing with the 
grisly heads of Maximinus and his son on the tips of 
their spears. 

Maximus returned to gladden Rome with the news, 
but it was decreed that six Emperors were to die that 
year. The soldiers, who had had another fight with the 
Romans during the war, were sullen and treacherous. 
Balbinus they hated for his effeminacy, Maximus for his 
rigour. The returning troops brought grievances of their 
own, and it was only the loyalty of the German soldiers 
that held the guards off the palace. Then there came a 
day when the delight of the games drew most of the 
soldiers away, and the guards marched upon the palace. 



236 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Maximus hastily ordered the loyal troops to be summoned : 
Balbinus cancelled the order. Their relations had been 
strained for some time, and each looked upon this sudden 
onslaught as a device of the other. The German troops 
arrived at last, to find the palace empty, and learn that 
the three Emperors were in the hands of the guards. 
They starLed at once for the camp, and found the bleeding 
remains of Maximus and Balbinus on the street. With 
them another ephemeral Empress passes dimly before us. 
The coins seem to indicate that Maximus was the husband 
of Quintia Crispilla at the time of his death. 

The youthful Gordian had been taken to the camp, and 
Rome was forced to acknowledge him as sole Emperor. 
Intoxicated, as so many had been, by the sudden obtaining 
of so vast a power, he seemed at first inclined to the model 
of Caligula. His uncle's concubines and his mother's eunuchs 
were in a fair way to rule the ruler. But a wise tutor, 
Timesitheus, obtained a better influence over him, and he 
soberly chose his daughter, Furia Sabina Tranquillina, as 
his Empress. The whole prospect of the Empire changed 
with his marriage, in 241 or 242, but the evil genius of 
Rome intervened once more. The Persians had again 
crossed the eastern frontier, and the Emperor and his 
father-in-law went to Asia to take command. The war was 
proceeding with success, when Timesitheus contracted a 
mysterious illness and died. Gordian gave his command 
to a dashing cavalry leader named PhiHp — the man who, 
we have strong reason to think, had poisoned Timesitheus. 
Philip was a handsome Arab, whose father had led a band 
of robbers in the desert. But the son was astute, and 
Gordian suspected nothing. Before many months the 
camps were simmering with discontent. Pay was reduced, 
and the troops were reluctantly informed by Philip that it 
was the command of the Emperor. Regiments found 
themselves quartered in districts where it was impossible 
to obtain sufficient food, and Philip begged them to regard 
the youth and military inexperience of Gordian. The plot 
culminated in the early spring of 244. Gordian was slain, 




MARCIA OTACILIA SEVERA 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 237 

and the son of the Arab pillager of caravans received the 
purple from the soldiers. 

The new Empress of Rome, Marcia Otacilia Severa, 
attracts our attention for a moment on account of the claim 
of the early Christian writers that she belonged to the new 
religion. The claim must have had some foundation, but 
the story on which it is generally based is regarded with 
reserve by historians. St. Chrysostom and others declare 
that, when Philip and Otacilia passed from the Euphrates, 
where Gordian had been murdered, to Antioch, they went 
to the Christian church for service on Easter-eve ; and that 
the bishop refused to admit them in any other character 
than that of penitents expiating a foul crime. Duruy 
ridicules the idea that a bishop would have dared so to 
address an Emperor in public before the middle of the 
third century, and it is certainly difficult to believe. 
Indeed, historians generally suspect that, as the story 
itself implies, Otacilia supported her husband in his 
criminal ambition, and are reluctant to regard her as a 
Christian. Her nationality is unknown, and she hardly 
emerges from the obscurity in which the scanty chronicles 
have left the reign of her husband. 

Let us hasten through the pages of ghastly adventure, 
and come to more interesting women. In the year 249 the 
troops in Moesia pressed the purple on one of the ablest 
Roman generals, Decius, and Philip was slain in the 
contest that followed. Otacilia fled with her son to the 
Praetorian camp, but the guards killed the boy in her arms, 
and sent her back sadly into the common ranks from which 
she had so unhappily risen. The wife of Decius, Herennia 
Etruscilla, who is known to us only from coins and an 
inscription, had little better fortune, since Decius perished 
in a war with the Goths two years later (251). His son and 
successor, Hostilianus, died in the following year, not 
without a suspicion of crime. The colleague of Decius and 
successor of his son, Gallus, was murdered in 253, together 
with his son Volusianus, with whom he had shared the 
Empire ; and the rival and successor of Gallus was 



238 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

assassinated within four months. Then Valerianus, an 
aged and distinguished Senator, came to the throne, and 
we begin to have less fleeting glimpses of the ladies of the 
court, and to make acquaintance with the two remarkable 
women who will especially occupy us. 

The elder Valerian does not long remain on the stage. 
The weakness into which the Empire had fallen was soon 
observed by its enemies on every side, and the frontier 
provinces were being devastated. Investing his elder son, 
Gallienus, with the purple. Valerian went to the East to 
oppose the Persian monarch. Sapor, who threatened the 
whole of Roman Asia, and after a time fell, with his army, 
into the hands of the enemy. Whether or no it be true 
that the proud Persian used to step on the person of the 
aged Emperor to mount his horse, it is at least certain that 
Valerian died among the Persians after some years of 
ignominious captivity, and his skin, stuffed and padded to 
the proportions of a man, was long exhibited as the most 
glorious of Sapor's many trophies. There are later writers 
who assert that his second wife, the Empress Mariniana, 
was captured with him, and brutally treated until she died, 
but the authority is slender. Cohen, the great authority 
on Roman coins, warns us that, though there are coins 
of a certain Mariniana, who seems to have been a lady of 
Valerian's court, it is not certain that she was his wife. 

So feeble did the Empire now become that its enemies 
made the most extensive and destructive inroads. The 
Persians advanced so far as to sack Antioch, the Franks 
overran Spain and reached Africa, the Alemanni spread 
terror in the north of Italy and even threatened Rome, and 
the Goths poured over Greece and Asia Minor. Gallienus 
received the news of each successive disaster with an 
insipid joke. Glittering with the jewels which encrusted 
his belt, his dress, and even his shoes, his hair powdered 
with gold dust, he dined from dishes of solid gold, in the 
company of his concubines, while his father suffered in 
captivity, and his subjects groaned under the hardship of 
invasion, famine, pestilence, and earthquake. His Empress, 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 239 

Cornelia Salonina, seems to have disdained his cowardly 
luxury, and she was replaced in his affection, though not 
in her position, by a charming barbarian. Attalus, King 
of the Marcomanni, had a beautiful daughter named Pipa 
or Pipara, whose attractiveness was brought to the notice 
of Gallienus. He frivolously submitted to the Senate that, 
since Rome had so many enemies, it were wise to disarm 
some of them ; and he asked Attalus for the hand of his 
daughter. The shrewd barbarian stipulated for a large 
part of Pannonia, and in return for that valuable slice of 
the Empire permitted his pretty daughter to be the concu- 
bine of the Roman Emperor. She never appears on the 
coinage, while Salonina — whose grave, intellectual features 
suggest that she found solace in culture — remains Augusta 
to the end. Serviez finds an admirable trait of Salonina's 
character in the punishment of a man who had sold her 
some false jewels. He was sentenced to the lions ; but 
when the terrible gates were opened, a harmless fowl 
flew out upon him, and he was discharged with the fright. 
The Roman historian, however, ascribes the trick expressly 
to Gallienus.^ 

In the eight years of Gallienus's complete control of the 
Empire (260-268) it was distracted and worn with misery 
and anarchy. The " Historia Augusta " estimates that 
" thirty tyrants " arose in that short period to dispute the 
power of the corrupt Gallienus ; Gibbon reduces the num- 
ber to nineteen; Duruy counts twenty-eight claimants to 
the throne. There was, in any case, a period of profound 
demoralization, and as nearly all these generals met with 
a violent death, involved many others in their fall, and very 
frequently led their troops in civil warfare, the drain on the 
impoverished system was disastrous. It is amongst these 
" thirty tyrants " that we find Zenobia and Victoria. 

* Some writers have conjectured, from the fact that the legend " In Pace " 
occurs on the coins of Salonina after her death, that she became a Christian. 
The phrase is not found otherwise except on Christian monuments. Duruy 
does not admit the inference, and points out that she built a temple to the 
goddess of the seasons. 



240 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Zenobia was the wife of Odenathus, the ruling man 
in the independent town of Palmyra. The town, which 
had become an important commercial centre, lay on the 
edge of the Syrian desert, and had long maintained a 
position of neutrality between the Romans on the west 
and the Parthians to the east. It had the title of a Roman 
colony, and Odenathus cannot have been more than its 
leading citizen and, perhaps, head of its Senate. To this 
little State came the news that the Roman Emperor was 
detained in ignominy by the King of Persia. Odenathus 
sent to Sapor a most polite suggestion that his conduct 
was improper, and gilded his remonstrance with a caravan 
of valuable presents. The presents were disdainfully 
thrown into the Euphrates, and the blustering Sapor 
threatened to punish his insolence. With great boldness 
the leading citizen of Palmyra formed an irregular army 
out of the neighbouring villages and the Arabs, with a few 
Roman troops, and inflicted a substantial reverse on the 
Persian troops. Gallienus gracefully acknowledged his 
service, and extended the Imperial title to him and his 
wife Zenobia, who became the representatives of Roman 
power in the East. 

Zenobia was, says Trebellius Pollio in the ** Historia 
Augusta," " one of the most noble of all the women of the 
East, and also one of the most beautiful." Her nobility 
rests upon her claim that she descended from Cleopatra, 
a point that we are unable to examine. The portrait-bust 
of her in the Vatican does not so much suggest exceptional 
beauty as exceptional power. It is a face of extraordinary 
strength and peculiar features. We can very well imagine 
her, as she is described for us, riding out on horseback before 
the assembled troops, her piercing black eyes aflame with 
spirit, a military helmet on her head, and a purple robe, 
embroidered with gems, so attached to her person as to 
leave naked the fine arm with which she emphasized her 
orders. She maintained a court of Persian magnificence, 
but was far removed from Persian insolence. She did not 
disdain to drink with her officers, and even to endeavour 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 241 

to surpass them in drinking. Yet it is uniformly stated 
that this remarkable independence of Syrian ideas as to a 
woman's position was united with a chastity of the most 
sensitive and peculiarly scrupulous character. When we 
add that she was a woman of exceptional culture, spoke 
Latin, Greek, and Egyptian, had so complete a command 
of the history of the East that she wrote a book on it, 
and enjoyed the daily companionship of the philosopher 
Longinus, who was tutor to her sons, we seem to have 
exhausted possible merit, and ventured into the province of 
legend. But we have still to say that her military and 
political ability was no less than her beauty, her culture, 
or her virtue. We shall see later that the finest Emperor 
of the age, Aurelian, spoke with extraordinary appreciation 
of her skill in warfare and in polity. 

Even as the wife of Odenathus, Zenobia was not in- 
active. She is said to have urged his bold attack on Persia, 
and she shared the longest marches of the soldiers when 
the campaign began. But she was soon the sole ruler of 
the East, in the interest, at first, of Rome. During the 
Persian war Odenathus quarrelled with a relative and 
officer, named Mseonius, and was only prevented by the 
intercession of his son, Herodes, from putting him to 
death. Herodes was the son of Odenathus by a former 
wife, and would be the natural heir to his dignity. The 
two sons whom Zenobia had borne him, Timolaus and 
Herennianus, were mere boys, but Zenobia had an older 
son, Vaballath, by a former husband. We can understand 
that there would be some jealousy in the family, now that 
the Roman purple and a practical sovereignty of the East 
were conferred on the " king of Palmyra." Zenobia could 
not but dislike and despise Herodes. He adopted the 
voluptuous ways of the East, and received from his father, 
as an immediate share of his heritage, the jewels, silks, and 
fair ladies which he had detached from the baggage of 
Sapor when that monarch retired before him. 

Yet there is no ground for the assertion that Zenobia 
was privy to the conspiracy which removed Odenathus and 
16 



242 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Herodes. Maeonius was consulting his own ambition, as 
well as appeasing his hatred, in having them assassinated. 
For a moment Zenobia was in a position of some anxiety, 
but she acted with vigour. She thrust her son Vaballath 
— the " Historia Augusta" at first says her two younger sons, 
but afterwards corrects this — before the Palmyreans as the 
most worthy heir of the power of Odenathus, and Maeonius 
passes into a significant obscurity. Vaballath was declared 
Augustus, and Zenobia became " Queen of the East," as 
she liked to call herself. The two younger boys were 
entitled Caesars, Within a short time it was felt at Rome 
that a new and rival power had arisen in the East. 

The voluptuous Gallienus could at times start from his 
rose-strewn couches and the arms of his mistresses, and 
conduct an energetic raid upon the opponents of his 
Empire. The victories of Odenathus seem to have inspired 
one of these fits of vigour. The legions in Gaul had cast 
off their allegiance to their degraded ruler, put his son 
Saloninus to death, and chosen as Emperor their able 
and upright commander, Cassianus Postumus. Gallienus 
marched against him, pressed him hard for a time, and 
then returned to Rome to enjoy a magnificent triumph. 
One hundred white oxen, with gilded horns, two hundred 
white lambs, several hundred lions, tigers, bears, and other 
animals, and twelve hundred gladiators, in superb costumes, 
preceded his car. The more serious Romans looked on in 
disdain. Some of the mimes, or comedians, dressed as 
Persians, and went about in the procession, staring in each 
other's faces, and saying that they were " looking for the 
Emperor's father." Gallienus had them burned alive. 

But the chief interest of this dash into Gaul is that it 
first brings to our notice the famous Gallic princess 
Vitruvia or Victoria.^ We find her supporting Postumus 

^ Her name is variously given as Vitruvia, Victoria, or Victorina. Since it 
appears as Vitruvia where the " Augustan History " copies from the Acts of 
the Senate, and no Roman would corrupt Victoria into Vitruvia, I take it that 
it was originally Vitruvia, and was Latinized, or changed by her when she 
became Empress, into Victoria. 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 243 

against Gallienus. When he is hard pressed, she persuades 
him to associate her son, Victorinus, with him in the 
Empire, and presently she herself becomes Augusta and 
•' Mother of the Camp" — a proof that she accompanied the 
army. Victorinus is said by one of the contemporary 
writers to have been more manly than Trajan, more clement 
than Antonine, graver than Nerva, and a better financier 
than Vespasian ; but this paragon of excellence had the one 
serious defect that he could not withhold his covetous eyes 
from the prettier wives of his officers. The responsibility 
of power sobered him for a time, but before long he led 
astray the wife of one of his officers, and was assassinated. 
At his mother's suggestion he, with his dying voice, named 
his young son his successor, but the angry soldiers 
murdered the boy. 

Victoria now put forward as candidate one of the 
soldiers themselves, a brawny officer named Marius, who 
had at one time been armourer or smith to the camp. He 
was accepted, but a slight that he was imprudent enough 
to put upon one of his old associates led to his receiving 
in his own breast one of the swords he had himself forged, 
after enjoying the delirious dignity of the purple for two 
days. The *' thirty tyrants " were playing their parts with 
great rapidity. Tetricus, the commander of the troops and 
a Senator, was next put forward by Victoria, and he left 
her in control of the affairs of Gaul while he led the army 
into Spain. Victoria's power was not of long duration, 
and the references to her in the chronicles are too meagre 
to enable us to picture her remarkable personality. For 
many years her power in Gaul was so great that her fame 
ran through the Empire, and Zenobia, as she afterwards 
told Aurelian, had the design of communicating with her 
and proposing to divide the Roman world between them. 
Her end is obscure. When Tetricus returned from Spain, 
he is said to have resented her domination and put her to 
death ; though it is elsewhere said that her death was due 
to natural causes. She did not live to witness or share the 
humiliation of Tetricus a few years later. 



244 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

We return to Zenobia, who had in the meantime become 
an independent sovereign. Gallienus had taken alarm at 
the growth of her power, and sent his general Heraclian 
with secret instructions to dislodge her. Zenobia divined 
the real intention of Heraclian and his troops, treated 
him as an invader, and destroyed his force. An invitation 
was then received, or obtained, from Egypt, and Zenobia 
sent 70,000 men to expel the troops of Gallienus from 
what she regarded as the kingdom of her fathers. Egypt 
was added to her dominions. Rome was now fully 
alarmed at the success of the two barbaric women, while 
every other province of the Empire was overrun by 
invaders or detached by locally-chosen Emperors. One 
of these rivals at length drew Gallienus from his palace 
once more, and gave an opportunity to remove his insolent 
weakness from the throne. The Emperor was besieging 
the pretender to the throne in Milan, when some of the 
leading officers conspired to assassinate him. He was 
drawn from his tent one night in March (268) by a false 
alarm that the besieged had made a sally, and, devoid 
alike of guards and armour, he was soon stricken with a 
mortal wound. Salonina is said by some to have perished 
with him, but of this there is no evidence. 

His successor, Claudius, an experienced soldier of 
obscure descent but great personal merit, decided to leave 
Zenobia and Victoria in possession of their power until 
he had rid the Empire of the formidable Goths. They 
were said to have an army of 320,000 men, and the 
whole of Greece and the north of Asia Minor had been 
plundered by them. The instruments of Roman comfort 
or luxury that they took back into the bleak forests of 
the north seemed to be drawing an inexhaustible stream 
of marauders upon the debilitated south. Two years were 
occupied by Claudius in destroying their power, and he 
had just cleansed the Roman territory of their presence 
when he died of the pestilence, in the spring of 270. The 
obscure brother of so virtuous and valorous a ruler was 
deemed a worthy successor to the purple, but the army 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 245 

made choice of a strong and capable commander, Aurelian, 
and, after two or three weeks' timid enjoyment of his power, 
Quintihus opened his veins and gracefully yielded the 
throne. 

The new Emperor was the bold and sturdy son of a 
provincial peasant, who had cut his way to the position of 
commander. Marriage with the daughter of a wealthy 
noble had further improved his position, and his temperance, 
zeal for discipline, skill, and bravery had made him a most 
effective leader. His first care was to complete the victory 
over the Goths, who were again advancing. After an 
exhausting struggle he entered into friendly alliance with 
them, drove back the other barbaric tribes who threatened 
or ignored the northern frontier of the Empire, and then 
turned his eyes toward the East. Gibbon makes him first 
apply himself to the restoration of Gaul, but the historians 
Vopiscus and Zosimus expressly say that he dealt first 
with the Queen of the East. 

Zenobia had now, in 272, enjoyed her remarkable power 
for about four years, and seemed, owing to the preoccupa- 
tion of Rome with the northern barbarians, to have 
established a solid and durable kingdom. Parthia and 
Persia respected her southern boundaries ; Egypt peacefully 
acknowledged her rule ; and even the cities of Asia Minor 
were beginning to bow to her title. But Palmyra was not 
a Rome, and provided too slender a base for so vast a 
dominion. As Aurelian and his formidable legions marched 
across Asia Minor, the cities returned at once to the 
Roman allegiance, and Zenobia prepared for a severe 
struggle. She led her army out in person from Antioch, 
and met the Romans near the river Orontes. Modern 
historians usually follow the account of the battle which 
describes Aurelian as stealing a victory by stratagem. He 
is said to have noticed the weight of Zenobia's heavily- 
armoured cavalry, drawn them into a wild gallop by a 
feigned retreat, and then wheeled his troops, when they 
showed signs of fatigue, and scattered them. But the 
" Historia Augusta," the nearest authority, tells us that 



246 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Aurelian's troops were really routed at first, and then 
recovered — owing to a miraculous apparition — and won. 

Zenobia retired to Antibch. Her general, Zabda, de- 
luded the inhabitants with a false report of victory, and 
trailed through the streets a captive whom he had dressed 
as Aurelian. But the Emperor was advancing, and they 
fled during the night to Emesa, where they were still 
able to put 70,000 men in the path of Aurelian. The 
second battle proved as disastrous to Zenobia as the first, 
and it was decided to retire at once on Palmyra. For a 
long time the city held Aurelian at bay, and he magnani- 
mously allowed that its successful resistance was due to 
the sagacity of Zenobia. In the midst of the long siege 
he wrote to a friend at Rome : 

" I hear that it is said that I do not the work of a 
man in triumphing over Zenobia. Those who blame me 
have no idea what kind of a woman she is — how prudent 
in counsel, how assiduous in arrangement, how severe 
with the troops, how liberal when it is expedient, how 
stern when there is need for sternness. I may venture to 
say that it was due to her that Odenathus put Sapor to 
flight, and advanced as far as Ctesiphon. 1 can assure 
you that she was held in such terror in the East and in 
Egypt that the Arabs, the Saracens, and the Armenians 
were afraid to move." 

So difficult and protracted did the siege prove that 
Aurelian at length wrote to her, offering to spare her 
life if she would surrender. The answer seems to have 
been preserved in one of those libraries of valuable docu- 
ments at Rome, from which the writers of the " Historia 
Augusta" obtained their material, as they tell us. It ran : 

"Zenobia, Queen of the East, to Aurelius Augustus. 
No one has ever yet made by letter such a request as you 
make. In matters of war you must obtain what you want 
by deeds. You ask me to surrender, as if you were 
unaware that Cleopatra preferred to die rather than lose 
her dignity. We are expecting auxiliaries from Persia, 
and the Saracens and Armenians are with us. The robbers 
of Syria beat your army, Aurelian. What will happen to 
you when our reinforcements come ? You will assuredly 



ZENOBIA^ AND VICTORIA 247 

have to lay aside the pride with which, as if you were a 
universal conqueror, you call on me to surrender." 

The expectation of reinforcements was sincere, but was 
destined to be disappointed. Day after da}'^ Zenobia and 
her officers looked out over the desert from their invincible 
walls, and descried no sign of the deliverers. Persia was 
distracted by the death of Sapor ; the Armenians and the 
Saracens had been seduced from her by Aurelian. Food 
began to fail, and the iron legions clung tenaciously to the 
little strip of country and intercepted whatever aid came to 
her. Zenobia resolved to go to Persia herself in quest of 
aid. Under cover of the night she stole out of the town, 
and fled toward Persia on a dromedary. 

Within a few days the anxious Palmyreans again saw 
their Queen — a captive in the hands of the Roman soldiers. 
It is probable that she had been betrayed. Aurelian, at all 
events, heard of her flight, and sent a company of horse in 
pursuit. They reached the banks of the Euphrates just as 
Zenobia and her attendants had entered a boat, and brought 
her back to the camp. She was one hour too late to save her 
liberty, or sacrifice her life. Palmyra sadly opened its gates, 
and Aurelian transferred its priceless treasures and rare 
curiosities to his wagons. Its chief officers and Zenobia 
he led away to Emesa, and put them on trial for rebellion. 

The reader of Gibbon will expect that we have now 
reached a point where the virility of Zenobia faints and the 
eternal feminine reveals itself. Gibbon records, indeed, the 
bold answer which Zenobia made to Aurelian's complaint 
of her infidelity to Rome ; but he goes on to say that, as the 
fierce demands of the soldiers for her death fell on her 
ears, she tremblingly pleaded for life, and, with a cowardice 
that her sex only could palliate, insisted that Longinus and 
the others had seduced her from her duty. Happily, we 
have a clear right to quarrel with the procedure of the 
great historian at this point. There are two versions of 
the behaviour of Zenobia : that of the Latin historians, 
Trebellius Pollio and Vopiscus in the " Historia Augusta,'' 



248 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

and that of the Greek historian Zosimus. The Latin 
writers, who lived at Rome in the generation after Zenobia, 
make her reply boldly to Aurelian, and do not say a word 
about her casting the blame on others. The Greek writer, 
a much later compiler, represents her as, in the words of 
Gibbon, " ignominiously purchasing life by the sacrifice of 
her fame and her friends." Gibbon affects to reconcile the 
two by making the woman's weakness follow upon the 
momentary show of courage. 

To this method of reconciling contradictory and unequal 
authorities we may justly demur. The much later version 
of Zosimus is not only less entitled in itself to acceptance, 
but it is seriously enfeebled when he goes on to make the 
wildly erroneous statement that Zenobia died on the way 
to Rome, and her companions were sunk in the Bosphorus. 
We have every right to follow the Latin historians. 
Zenobia was brought before Aurelian, and the soldiers 
fiercely demanded that she should be put to death. Ex- 
asperated as the Emperor was, he refused to slay a woman, 
and asked her why she had dared to resist the majesty of 
Rome. " In you," she replied, " I recognize an Imperial 
majesty, because you have vanquished me, but I saw none in 
Gallienus." Her life was spared. What Roman general 
could have resisted the wish to grace his triumph at Rome 
with a greater than Cleopatra ? The troops, with their 
vast treasures and their captives, moved slowly homeward, 
after executing Longinus and some others. 

In the triumph which Aurelian had so splendidly earned, 
and no less splendidly celebrated, we catch our last certain 
glimpse of the Queen of the East, one of the most notable 
women of all time. Along the flower-strewn lane between 
the dense walls of citizens passes one of the longest and 
grandest processions that ever led a victor to the Capitol. 
An immense number of tamed elephants, lions, tigers, 
leopards, bears, and other beasts move slowly and sullenly 
along, and eight hundred pairs of gladiators give promise 
of the impending spectacles. Then there are cars heavily 
laden with the gold, silver, and jewels of Palmyra, the rare 





ZENOBIA 

ENLARGED FROM THE COIN IN THE BERLIN MUSEUM 



ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 249 

presents of Persia, the purples of India, and the silks of 
China. Then there is the long and extraordinary train of 
captives, representing the nineteen nations which Aurelian 
has subdued, even women who have been taken, in male 
costume, in the sternest battles. At last the melancholy 
Hne is closed by the lithe bronzed figure, with brilliant 
black eyes and teeth like pearls, of the woman whose 
beauty, genius, and daring have been on the lips of Rome 
for several years. Clothed for the last time in the heavily- 
jewelled robes of a queen — she had complained that she 
was not strong enough to walk under the load of jewels — 
she drags along the golden chains which bind her hands 
and feet, and a slave sustains the weight of the gold band 
round her throat. Beside her, in scarlet cloak and Gallic 
trousers, is Tetricus, Victoria's last Emperor in Gaul. The 
whole Empire is again subject to Rome. And before the 
car of the conqueror three empty chariots are driven : one 
is the gold and silver car of Odenathus, one, of gold studded 
with gems, is a present from Persia, and the third is the car 
which Zenobia had made for her triumphant entry into 
Rome. Never had Emperor looked from his car on so 
superb a triumph. In less than a year Aurelian would be 
assassinated. 

The last phase of Zenobia's life is not quite clear. 
Zosimus is certainly wrong in his reproduction of a 
story that she died, or took her life, before she reached 
Rome. Still later and equally negligible writers ventured 
to say that she became a Christian, and even that Aurelian 
married one of her daughters. The " Historia Augusta," 
which we may follow, as it was written in Rome a 
generation later, tells us that Aurelian gave her a villa 
near Hadrian's palace at Tivoli, where she spent the rest 
of her life in the education of her children and the prosy 
duties of a Roman matron, and, we may conjecture, in 
looking back with sad but proud recollection on the 
stirring romance of her career. Bishop Eusebius observes 
briefly in his " Chronicle " that she lived to a great age, 
and was held in the greatest regard at Rome. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 

ALTHOUGH we have already indicated the fate of 
Aurelian, we have not yet referred to the woman 
who shared his Imperial title and his great renown. 
Her personality is, in fact, entirely unknown ; even her 
name is preserved for us only on the coinage. We may 
fairly conjecture that she disliked the plebeian ways of her 
husband, and discharged the dutic of a consort without 
enthusiasm. Daughter of a wealthy and prominent noble, 
Ulpius Crinitus, she had conferred a useful distinction 
on the ambitious peasant at a time when he was making 
his way in the Imperial service^ and it is conjectured, on 
somewhat slender grounds, that she accompanied him on 
his campaigns. But his life at the palace was short and 
inglorious. He disliked its pomp and luxury, and found 
his chief delight in pitting his comedians against each 
other in eating-contests. He pampered the common citi- 
zens by increasing their free ration of bread, and adding 
pork to it. When he went on to meditate a free dis- 
tribution of wine, one of his ministers sarcastically sug- 
gested that he might add geese and chickens. When the 
Empress, Ulpia Severina, thought it fitting that she should 
wear silk mantles, her husband forbade her to indulge 
in that rare and costly product of a precarious commerce 
with China. 

Aurelian was, in fact, essentially a soldier. His manner, 
and even the reforms which he endeavoured to make, 
caused grave dissatisfaction at Rome, and a conspiracy 

250 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 251 

against him was discovered within a few months of the 
magnificent triumph he had enjoyed. He crushed it with 
a fierceness that almost obhterated the memory of his 
great services, and then returned to Asia to meet the 
Persians. On his march he was assassinated, in the be- 
ginning of the year 275, and the great promise of his 
reign was unfulfilled. Ulpia Severina seems to have died 
before him, as the historian speaks only of a daughter 
who survived him. 

Once more we pass swiftly over a number of turbulent 
3''ears until we come to an Empress of whom we have 
a comparatively ample knowledge. It is generally ad- 
mitted, though not entirely beyond doubt, that the throne 
remained vacant for the greater part of the year 275. 
The " Historia Augusta," at least, which was written in 
the next generation, describes a situation in remarkable 
contrast to the earlier haste in appointing Emperors. 
We are asked to believe that the Senate and the army 
spent many months in a most edifying encounter, each 
endeavouring to induce the other to choose a ruler. At 
length the Senators chose one of their number, the aged 
and upright Tacitus, who set out to take command of the 
troops in Asia. Within a few weeks, worn by the un- 
wonted fatigue and pained by the, unruly behaviour of 
the soldiers, he passed away. Same of the historians 
declare that he died of actual violence. There is no 
trace of an Empress. We read that Tacitus, like Aurelian, 
forbade his wife to wear sumptuous clothing, but this 
was probably in earlier days. The absence of coins leads 
us to think that she had died. 

He was succeeded by a young and vigorous officer, 
of peasant extraction, named Probus, under whom the 
Empire recovered much of its strength. For six years he 
laboured successfully to restore the prestige of Rome, 
but his severity led at length to assassination. During 
a mutiny of the soldiers, in the year 282, "a thousand 
swords were plunged at once into the bosom of the un- 
fortunate Probus," as Gibbon too floridly expresses it. 



252 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

From the absence of coins we may almost gather that 
his wife had died before his accession. Carus, who 
succeeded him, was an aged general of sixty years. He 
died after a year of strenuous warfare, and left the 
Empire to his sons Carinus and Numerianus. The 
younger Emperor was dispatched to the East, and Carinus 
virtually reigned alone. 

Even the experience of our own time has so frequently 
taught us to expect a mediocre or effeminate issue from 
a distinguished and virile stock that we do not wonder 
at this happening constantly in the history of Rome. We 
need not refer it to the mystery of heredity. The vigorous 
sire had developed and enhanced his strength in the labori- 
ous climb to the heights of his chosen world. The son, 
finding the paths to the summit smoothed, and an engaging 
luxury at his command without exertion, allows it to 
degenerate. The finest steel and the purest gold yield and 
crumble in a corroding atmosphere. We cannot, therefore, 
affect astonishment at the almost invariable failure of the 
Roman practice of eagerly welcoming a son to the place 
of his gifted father. 

The reign of Carinus affords one of the worst illustra- 
tions of the evil. Indolent, insolent, and luxurious, he 
saw in his Imperial power an opulent ministry to his 
depraved tastes. He did indeed provide Rome with the 
most splendid entertainments. The amphitheatre rang 
once more with the coarse applause of the ninety thousand 
spectators of its bloody contests ; the Circus was trans- 
formed into a forest, in which the strange or beautiful 
beasts of remote lands lived under the eyes of three 
hundred thousand Romans. But this indulgence of the 
people's appetites was held to excuse an unbridled ministry 
to those of the prince. The whisper went once more 
through the fetid depths of Roman life that there were 
rich awards for the ingenious and industrious pandar to 
a sated voluptuary, and the palace exhibited again the 
loathsome spectacles that had long been expelled from it. 

They have little interest for us, as although Carinus 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 253 

made and unmade nine Empresses in little over a year, 
they are lost in the riot of the time. One poor name, 
that of Magnia Urbica, has survived on a few coins. She 
is given by Serviez as the wife of Carus, because she is 
represented with two children on one of the coins. Cohen 
points out, however, that the group does not properly 
consist of a mother and two children, and he concludes 
that she was one of the nine wives of Carinus. In the 
number of his consorts Carinus surpassed the high record 
of Imperial license, and he was not less original in the 
grounds for his divorces. Sterility has often been pleaded 
by monarchs as a fit reason for repudiating their wives ; 
it was reserved to Carinus to dismiss them the moment 
they gave proof of fertility. So the women of Rome 
succeeded each other rapidly in the dissolute palace, where 
the Emperor, surrounded by his courtesans, glittering down 
to his shoes with diamonds and emeralds, sat on rose- 
strewn couches to his costly banquets. 

The new pestilence was blown out of the Imperial 
city by a storm from the East. The younger Emperor, 
Numerianus, was a gentle, cultured, and delicate youth. 
As he led the troops home from the East, he sheltered 
his eyes from the burning sun by keeping to his tent 
or his closed litter. At length his complete seclusion 
gave rise to suspicion, and the soldiers broke into his 
tent, only to find a mouldering body. The ambition of 
Aper, his father-in-law, who commanded the guards, 
fastened the guilt upon him, and a general assembly of 
the soldiers appointed one of their abler officers, Diocletian, 
to judge him. Diocletian, possibly with reason, preferred 
to execute rather than to try Aper, and he was at once 
saluted as Emperor by the troops. The son of two slaves, 
he had educated himself and pushed his way to the highest 
offices and commands ; and he now composedly donned 
the purple mantle which the soldiers offered him, and 
led the legions toward Rome, Carinus marched out 
against him, but was assassinated by an officer whose wife 
he had appropriated, and a new chapter opened in the 



254 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

annals of Rome. A strong man and judicious statesman 
had come to the throne, and he would occupy it for twenty 
years. 

From our point of view it is disappointing that the 
wife of Diocletian does not come to our notice until his 
reign is nearly over. Her very name was disputed for 
ages ; even now her personality is only faintly illumined 
by the adventures of her later years. Her daughter is 
a more commanding figure, and other Imperial ladies stand 
out in the chronicle of the times. Some of these, such 
as the mother and wife of Constantine, we reserve for the 
next chapter ; and we may compress into a few lines the 
story of the twenty years' reign of Diocletian. 

A year after his accession, which took place in the year 
285, Diocletian chose a colleague to share the control of 
the vast Empire. This friend and partner, Maximian, was 
the son of peasants, rough, ignorant, and unscrupulous, 
but an effective commander. He was entrusted with the 
care of the West, Diocletian passed to the East, and several 
years were profitably spent in restoring the crumbling 
frontiers. The task proved so formidable that, in 292, they 
chose two officers for the inferior dignity of " Caesars " — 
a title which implied that they would probably one day be 
Augusti, and should meantime wear the purple, but have 
no power to make laws or control finance. Of the two, 
Galerius again was a child of the soil, while Constantius 
was the son of a provincial noble ; and they were compelled 
to dismiss their humbler wives, and wed the daughters of 
the Emperors, Four courts were thus set up within the 
Empire, while Rome found itself coldly neglected, its palace 
deserted, and its Senate impotent. 

To the court of Galerius we shall return presently, 
while we leave the affairs of Constantius and his wife to 
the next chapter. The court and the Empress of Maximian 
need not detain us. He chose Milan as his seat, and began 
to adorn the northern town with the marble edifices that 
befitted its new dignity. His wife was a very attractive 
Syrian woman, Galeria Valeria Eutropia. Her name has 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 255 

led some to conjecture that she was related to the father 
of Constantius, Eutropius, one of the chief nobles of 
Dardania, though the connexion is feeble. She seems, in 
any case, to have regarded her uncultivated husband with 
disdain, and sought more genial company. Her son 
Maxentius is said by some to have been the issue of a 
liaison with a compatriot, while others declare that he was 
a boy substituted for the daughter she bore, because 
Maximian desired a son. We may leave these disputable 
scandals and come to the court of Diocletian. 

The son of a Roman slave had created a glittering 
court at Nicomedia. His palace, round which the city 
quickly grew in size and magnificence, was adorned and 
served with an Oriental pomp. The successive approaches 
to the chamber of the Emperor were guarded by splendid 
officials, and when the suppliant or ambassador penetrated 
at length to the inner apartment, he found the stately 
Diocletian in purple and gold robes, his brow encircled 
by a glistening diadem, and was compelled to prostrate 
himself before the divine majesty. It was not, however, 
the vanity or folly of a Caligula, but a calculated policy, 
that had prompted Diocletian to clothe himself with this 
Olympic dignity. Earlier Emperors, of the same mean 
extraction, had refused to put a barrier of royal ceremony 
between themselves and their subjects or soldiers, and 
had invariably fallen by the hand of the assassin. Diocletian 
was too shrewd, too much attached to life, and too sensible 
of his beneficent use of power, to incur the risk. He had 
restored Egypt to obedience, humiliated the Persians, and 
devoted an even greater ability to the reform of the 
administration. Co-operating with his vigorous colleague 
in the West, he had brought peace and prosperity back to 
the Empire. 

In the settled years of his reign we begin again to 
recognize the various personalities of the court. The 
Empress herself is more or less involved in a piquant 
obscurity. Until the end of the seventeenth century her 
name was unknown, and a great deal of romantic legend was 



256 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

reproduced in regard to her. Cardinal Baronius found in 
"Acts of St. Susanna" that her name was St. Serena, a martyr 
for the Christian faith. Other "Acts" of the martyrs 
furnished a St. Eleuthera and a St. Alexandra as consorts 
of Diocletian. He seemed to have been an Imperial Blue- 
beard. But in 1679 the manuscript was found of an early 
Christian work, " On the Deaths of the Persecutors," and 
the earlier writings were proved, in the words of the 
learned Franciscan, Father Pagi, to be fictitious and full of 
untruths. The many saintly martyrs gave way to an 
Empress Prisca, who broke down lamentably at the first 
test of her faith. It is very curious that we have no coins 
whatever of Prisca, though she must have lived through 
the whole reign of Diocletian. This, and the fact that she 
left him many years before his death, suggest either that 
she was not married to him at all or that he had little 
regard for her. She was, in any case, a woman of weak 
and retiring character, and is mentioned only in associa- 
tion with her daughter. 

Valeria was a beautiful, attractive, and spirited young 
woman, with a good deal of the strength, and not a 
little of the ambition, of her father. She was married 
to Galerius, the Caesar whom Diocletian had chosen, and 
remained with him by the side of the Emperor. Galenas 
was, as I said, of peasant origin, and never laid aside 
the uncultivated roughness of his class. Diocletian had, 
by diligent education, erased the traces of his own lowly 
origin, but his peasant colleagues had gone straight from 
the soil to the camp, and the work of a soldier had not 
given them the least inclination to seek culture. The 
character of Galerius has been painted in the most lurid 
colours on account of his persecution of the Christians, but 
it is significant that both Valeria and Prisca clung to his 
court when Diocletian retired. His mother, Romula, and 
other rustic relatives were attracted to his court. There 
was, it is clear, a most incongruous group of personalities 
about the court of Diocletian, and in the nineteenth year 
of his reign they were shaken by a severe storm. The 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 257 

great and final struggle began between the old faith and 
the new, and Prisca and Valeria favoured the latter. 

Christianity had not been persecuted for half a century, 
and had made great progress. The cult of the old gods 
was palpably insincere, and half-a-dozen Asiatic creeds 
were steadily supplanting it. On the streets of Nicomedia, 
as on the streets of Rome or any other large city, one 
might meet any day the white-robed shaven priests of Isis, 
the painted and effeminate ministers of Cybele, the Persian 
representatives of the popular cult of Mithra, and — until 
they were expelled by Diocletian — the black-garbed clergy 
of the Manichaeans and the Christians. The Christians 
were now advancing. There had been some slight and 
irregular repression of them from time to time since the 
days of Nero, but more than forty years of toleration, and 
the knowledge that their adherents were now occupying 
high places in the camp and the court, and that even the 
wives of the Emperor and the Caesar favoured them, gave 
them strong confidence. One of their churches occupied 
a central and commanding position in Nicomedia. Four 
influential officers of the court attended it, and it seems 
that Valeria and Prisca were, if not- Christians, openly 
disposed to the new religion. All we know in that regard 
is that they were " compelled " to sacrifice when the per- 
secution began. 

Persecution on account of religion, as such, was not 
natural to the cosmopolitan builders of the Pantheon, and 
Diocletian was a broad-minded statesman, so that the 
origin of the persecution is not so clear as it was once 
held to be. The literary remains which we have to use 
have to be handled with caution. The " Historia Augusta " 
has ended with Carinus, and we shall greatly miss its 
minute and gossipy descriptions. Zosimus, a pagan writing 
in a Christian age, has an appearance of sullen reticence 
at times and a perceptible bias. AureUus Victor and 
Eutropius are scanty, and the immediate Christian writers 
are used very cautiously by modern historians. Bishop 
Eusebius says frankly, in his " Life of Constantine," that 

17 



258 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

he will write only what tends to edify, and the little work 
"On the Deaths of the Persecutors" is obviously imagi- 
native in many pages and inaccurate in others. Experts 
still differ as to whether it comes from the pen of the 
brilliant Christian rhetorician Lactantius, but all warn us 
to take account of its strong feeling. Our authorities, in 
a word, now belong to two antagonistic and bitterly hostile 
creeds, and, as all subsequent historians favour one side 
or the other, we have to proceed with caution. I have 
endeavoured, in the remaining chapters, to make my 
way between them with more than ordinary care and 
independence. 

A few incautious hints given in Lactantius throw 
a faint light on the origin of the great persecution. The 
writer of the treatise has himself a very positive theory. 
The root of the evil was, he says, Romula, the peasant- 
mother of the Caesar. Fanatically attached to the gods of 
her native mountains, she inspired her son with a hatred 
of Christianity, and Galerius bullied the older Emperor 
into issuing the Edict of Persecution. We feel that the 
policy of Diocletian would hardly yield to the prejudice 
of a superstitious woman. There is more enlightenment 
in the incidental statements that Romula was stung by 
the disdain of Christian officers in the palace, and that 
Diocletian was greatly annoyed at seeing Christian soldiers 
disturb the harmony, if not the efficacy, of his sacrificial 
ceremonies by making the sign of the cross. Galerius 
may have been moved by the growing reluctance of 
Christians to bear arms, and the very pronounced rejection 
by some of the arms they bore. There is no need to trust 
the imaginary conversation which Lactantius puts in the 
mouths of Diocletian and Galerius. They agreed that the 
zeal of the Christians was impertinent or dangerous, and, 
in the month of February (303), a troop of soldiers was 
sent to raze to the ground their large and commanding 
church. On the following day Diocletian published an 
Edict forbidding the cult under grave penalties. When 
the Imperial decree was torn down by a zealous Christian, 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 259 

and this act of treason was openly applauded by his 
fellows, Diocletian was embittered, and blood began to 
flow. During the next fortnight the Emperor's quarters 
in the palace were twice found to be in flames. Diocletian 
was convinced that the fire was kindled by Christian 
officers, and gave a full sanction to the work of repressing 
them. 

Prisca and Valeria were not among the heroines of the 
persecution. Lactantius destroys all the myths of martyred 
Empresses by telling us that they consented to burn a few 
grains of incense in honour of Jupiter, and impotently 
witnessed the dark roll of the wave of persecution through 
the provinces. He does not even say that they joined, 
or rejoined, the Church when the persecution was over, 
and we lose sight of them for a few years. Probably they 
went with Diocletian to Rome for his triumph in November, 
and returned with him to Nicomedia in the summer of 304. 
He was confined to the palace by a serious illness during 
the following winter, and as soon as he recovered he 
abdicated the throne. It is untrue that the threats of 
Galerius forced him to do this. He had expressed the 
intention years before. 

On a wide plain near Nicomedia the army assembled on 
May I St, 305, for the unexampled ceremony of the abdica- 
tion of an Emperor. A little hill in the centre was sur- 
mounted by a lofty throne and a statue of Jupiter, and the 
ageing Emperor — he was in his fifty-ninth year — surren- 
dered the power he had wielded so well for more than 
twenty years. By a previous arrangement, Maximian was 
abdicating on the same day at Milan. The two Caesars 
became Augusti, and two new Caesars were appointed. In 
their selection we recognize the partial and unskilful hand 
of Galerius. He handed his own Csesarean dignity to a 
rustic nephew, Daza — " who had just left his herds in the 
forest," Lactantius scornfully says — and sent a loyal and 
undistinguished friend to receive that of Maximian in Italy. 
From that selfish act would develop one of the greatest 
civil wars since the founding of the Empire. In the ranks 



26o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

of the officers by the platform was the tall, handsome, 
gifted, and disappointed young man who would one day 
be known as Constantine the Great. 

Diocletian retired to Salona, in his native province of 
Dalmatia, and built, close to the town, what was for the 
age a magnificent palace. Valeria remained in the palace 
of Galerius, and it seems that Prisca stayed with her, as we 
shall presently find her sharing the hard lot of her daughter. 
Why the mother, at least, chose to remain in Nicomedia is 
left to our imaginations. The religion they had favoured 
was cruelly suppressed, and, if we are to believe Lactantius, 
their virtue must have been outraged by the unbridled 
license of the new Emperor, He is described as an ogre, 
dragging the noblest women of Nicomedia from their 
husbands, feeding his bears on innocent citizens, and 
" never taking a meal without a taste of human blood." 
Yet Valeria clung to her husband even through the painful 
and repulsive illness which ended his life ; and her name 
was given by him to a part of his Empire. The picture is 
evidently overdrawn, yet life in the palace, with Galerius 
and his boorish relatives, cannot have been very congenial, 
and the temper of Galerius would be soured by the events 
that followed. 

The first mishap was the flight of Constantine. He had 
been living for some years at the court of Diocletian, and 
was deeply disappointed and rightly indignant at the choice 
of the new Caesars. By birth and ability he had the 
clearest title to the purple. He was now a tall and manly 
young officer, handsome, popular, and successful, and 
anxious to join his father Constantius in Gaul. There is 
little doubt that he fled during the night, though the 
romantic story told by Lactantius is now generally re- 
garded as a clumsy piece of fiction. It describes Galerius 
as failing to take the youth's life by engaging him in 
dangerous contests, and at length devising an ingenious 
scheme. He one night gives Constantine permission to 
depart after he has seen him in the morning, and warns 
him that he will be put to death if he is still in Nicomedia 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 261 

at noon. Then the ogre gives orders that he is not to be 
awakened before noon on the morrow ; but the young hero 
steals all the horses in the stables — there were probably 
hundreds — cripples all other horses along his route, and 
flies to his father. The only authentic point is that 
Constantine fled. He would wade back through a sea of 
blood. Within a few months his father was dead, Con- 
stantine was chosen by the army to succeed him, and 
Galerius was forced to recognize him as Caesar. 

Galerius gave the title of Augustus, which Constantius 
had left vacant at his death, to his loyal Severus, but he 
was soon informed that the troops, the people, and the 
Senate had chosen another Emperor at Rome. A brief 
outline of the stirring events that followed will suffice here. 
The new Emperor was Maxentius, son of the retired 
Maximian. The father issued from his retreat to join in 
the fray, and Galerius was bound to support Severus. 
Diocletian looked on quietly from his gardens at Salona. 
When Maximian urged him to return to power, he said 
that if Maximian could see the vegetables he was growing 
he would not make such a request. Briefly, Severus was 
treacherously taken by Maximian, and induced to ease the 
complication by taking his life. Maximian, Galerius, and 
Diocletian met at Carnuntum, on the Danube, and it was 
settled that Galerius and Licinius (one of his officers) should 
be recognized as Emperors, and Constantine and Maximin 
(Daza) as Caesars. Maxentius was disregarded, and Maxi- 
mian was persuaded to retire once more. How the restless 
and ambitious old man then clung to Constantine, and 
attempted to murder and displace him, we shall see later. 

The expedition of Galerius into Italy proved disastrous, 
as he returned in bad health and temper to his dominions. 
He died in 311, of an unpleasant disease, of which the 
morbid reader may find a luxurious description in Lactantius. 
Valeria remained with him to the end, and then a new and 
more romantic chapter opened for her and her mother. The 
two Emperors of the East made rival offers of their hospital- 
ity ; for Maximin had exacted an equal dignity with Licinius. 



262 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Valeria was at that time in her early thirties, and her 
mourning garments did not detract from her ripe beauty 
of face and figure. She is represented as weighing the 
respective immoralities of the two Eastern Emperors, and 
considering to which of the two it would be the less 
dangerous to entrust her virtue. Lactantius does not tell 
us why she was forced to choose at all ; why she and her 
mother did not retire to the luxurious and unsullied palace 
of Diocletian. The end of his life was approaching, it is 
true, but the palace would still shelter them. On the other 
hand, Maximin and Licinius are both very thickly tarred 
with the brush of Lactantius. We shall see something of 
the conduct of Licinius later. As to Maximin, if one half 
of what Lactantius and Eusebius say is true, he must have 
been known over the whole Empire as an erotic maniac. 
He may not have been this romantic combination of Nero, 
Elagabalus, and Carinus, but we know from other writers 
that he was much more vicious than Licinius. When, 
therefore, we find Valeria choosing to live in his palace, we 
cannot repress a suspicion that the beautiful widow was 
not quite so unworldly as she is represented to have been. 
She had not been long in her new home when certain 
officers came to tell her that Maximin loved her, and was 
prepared to divorce his wife and wed her. When she 
refused, the baffled passion turned to rage, and mother and 
daughter were expelled from the palace. When we learn, 
from a later passage, that Valeria refused to yield her right 
to the property of Galerius, the episode seems more human. 
A story of adultery was invented, a Jew — the villain of 
early Christian literature — was suborned to give false 
evidence, and several of Valeria's friends were implicated. 
A number of ladies of high rank were publicly executed, 
and the Empresses, spoiled of their goods, were driven 
from province to province, until they found themselves 
lodged in a mean village on the edge of the Syrian desert. 
Valeria contrived to acquaint her father with their situation, 
but the rough Maximin rejected his feeble entreaties. They 
seem to have spent the winter (312-13) in this miserable 




SALONINA 




VALERIA 

ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 



THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 263 

exile. The only comfort was that they had with them 
Candidian, a natural son of Galerius, whom Valeria had 
adopted, and Severian, the son of Severus. 

In the early spring the little group were inspirited by 
the news that the tyrant had fallen in a struggle with 
Licinius, who was now sole Emperor in the East. What 
follows, in the narrative of Lactantius, is even more obscure, 
and suggests still more strongly that much is concealed 
from us. Candidian went openly to the court of Licinius, 
and was cordially received and promoted. The other 
young man followed. Licinius was naturally hostile to 
all who had taken the side of Maximin, but he could hardly 
be angry with these poor victims of Maximin's rage. 
Valeria, however, went in disguise to Nicaea, where the 
court was, to follow the fortunes of her adopted son. 

Suddenly something happened which brought upon 
them all the sword of the executioner. What it was we 
can only conjecture. A writer like Lactantius is so 
accustomed to regard a savage outbreak on the part of one 
of the last pagan Emperors as a natural event that he 
disdains to enlighten us. A part of the story has been 
concealed, and it would not be fantastic to suppose that 
the spirited, young, and ambitious Valeria meditated an 
intrigue for the advancement of Candidian to the throne. 
It is plain that Licinius suspected this. The royal birth 
and manly bearing of the youth might suffice to draw such 
a suspicion on him, but do not plausibly explain the treat- 
ment of the Empresses. Nor is there any apparent reason 
for her disguise. She was willing, Lactantius says, to 
cede her rights to Licinius, and the sentence unjustly 
passed on her by Maximin would have no weight with 
him. 

Whatever the cause of the trouble was, Valeria learned 
one day that Candidian and Severian were arrested, and 
they were presently executed. She fled to the remote 
Syrian village, but she was so plainly implicated, in some 
way, that she dare not remain there. Dressing in the 
rough robes of the common people, the aged mother and 



264 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

her brilliant daughter set out on a painful and aimless 
journey. Either a sentence of death had been passed on 
them, or they had ground to apprehend one ; for their 
flight would certainly elicit it. Lactantius says that they 
wandered in this disguise for fifteen months, but it is 
difficult to believe that they could so long evade the 
Imperial troops who hunted them.^ At length they were 
recognized and arrested in Thessalonica, and the tragedy 
of their unfortunate and, so far as we know, innocent lives 
was brought to a close. Under the eyes of the assembled 
citizens the wife and daughter of the great Emperor were 
beheaded, and their remains were contemptuously flung 
into the sea. 

^ It has been suggested that the fifteen months of Lactantius may date 
from their expulsion from the court of Maximin. This is hardly possible. 
Galerius died in May, 311, and Valeria was still in mourning for him, and 
pleaded his recent death, when Maximin sought to wed her. Maximin died 
in April, 313, so that the deaths of Prisca and Valeria cannot have been 
earlier than the summer of that year. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 

THE fourfold power which Diocletian had prudently 
set up ensured for the Empire twenty years of 
uneventful prosperity. The two Emperors and 
their Caesars guarded and repaired the frontiers, at which 
the strong young nations of the hills and the forests were 
now gathering in ominous numbers, while the body of the 
Empire tranquilly pursued its sluggish and debilitated life. 
But no sooner had the balanced mind and the firm hand of 
Diocletian relinquished their control than the system 
revealed its weakness. The multiplication of dignities led 
to a multiplication of aspirants ; the distribution of pov/er 
inflamed the ambition of the stronger and less scrupulous. 
In one year eight generals claimed and bore the title of 
Augustus, and our stage is crowded with Empresses. 
Most of them, however, are so poorly outlined in the 
records of the time that we may neglect these faint conjugal 
shadows of inconspicuous rulers, and select for considera- 
tion the three or four more prominent consorts of the 
Emperors. 

Possibly the most widely known of all the Roman 
Empresses, more familiar even than the very different 
figure of Messalina, is Helena, the mother of Constantine. 
The first Christian Empress, the generous supporter of 
the early Church, the first royal woman to find a place in 
the list of the canonized, we turn to her with eagerness to 
discover the contrast with her pagan predecessors. She 
does not bear the Imperial title, and does not properly fall 

265 



266 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

within our range, until she is advanced in years, but we 
cannot understand her character unless we glance first at 
her earlier years. 

In one of his more important sermons (" De Obitu 
Theodosii," § 42) St. Ambrose observes that she " is said 
to have been a maid at an inn," and he so clearly accepts 
the statement that historians, sacred and profane, have not 
hesitated to follow him. The claim of another Roman 
writer, that Constantine had illumined Britain "by 
originating there," gave rise at one time to a theory that 
she was British, and our learned commentators furnished 
so august a lady with a royal pedigree. The phrase is, 
however, generally understood to refer to the beginning 
of Constantine's Imperial career, and the native town of 
Helena is sought either in Dacia or in Nicomedia. Since 
Constantine gave her name to Drepanum, in Nicomedia, 
we may presume that her first humble home was in that 
town, and that she moved from there to Naissos, in 
Dacia, where the birth of Constantine is usually placed. 

A stabulum was, in the language of the time, one of the 
meaner inns in the towns through which the Roman roads 
ran. A stabularia — the epithet used by St. Ambrose— was 
a woman or girl connected with the inn ; and those 
temporary resting-places for soldiers or merchants on their 
journeys were so easy in their ways that the word was 
sometimes used in an unpleasant sense. We may follow 
the early tradition that Helena was the daughter of a man 
who kept one of these inns, possibly a quite respectable 
establishment, at Drepanum, on the way to the city of 
Nicomedia, which Diocletian had made his capital. Here, 
in or about the year 273, the young Roman officer Constan- 
tius — later, for some obscure reason, called Constantius the 
Pale (Chlorus) — saw and fell in love with Helena. The 
road that ran through Drepanum was much used by the 
troops, and the encounter is placed at the time when 
Aurelian was conducting his campaign against Zenobia. 
Constantius, an excellent officer and the son of a provincial 
noble of some distinction, would then (273) be in his 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 267 

twenty-third year. Helena, who was over eighty at her 
death in 328, must have been two or three years older. 

Historians have left us a lengthy and learned debate on 
the question whether she was the wife or the concubine of 
Constantius, and the grouping of the combatants is singular. 
In the Migne edition of the works of the Fathers we find a 
note appended to the passage of St. Ambrose, which I have 
quoted, in which the Benedictine commentators observe 
that " all the writers on Roman affairs declare that Helena 
was the concubine, not the wife, of Constantius," and they 
adopt that view. Yet the critical Gibbon defends " the 
legality of her marriage " with a rare and edifying chivalry, 
and Mr. Firth, in his recent biography of Constantine, 
asserts that it is " beyond question." With such weighty 
encouragement ecclesiastical writers have confidently 
deserted the Benedictines and followed Gibbon. Let us 
first hear the authorities, and we may not find the problem 
insoluble. 

Bishop Eusebius, the chaplain of the Imperial family, as 
one may term him, would not mention such a circumstance 
in his " Life of Constantine," even if he knew it to be true ; 
but it is not quite accurate to say peremptorily that the 
bishop never mentions it. In the second book of his 
"Chronicle" {ad annum 310) we read that Constantine was 
" the son of Constantius by his concubine Helena." We 
have no means of determining if these words were written 
by Eusebius or added by St. Jerome.^ Even in the latter 
case it is a weighty testimony. 

Another Christian historian of Jerome's time, Orosius — 
who does not follow Zosimus, as Gibbon says, but precedes 
him — makes the same statement (c. xxv), and it is later 
repeated in the "Chronicle" of Cassiodorus. A writer 
of the generation after Constantine, commonly known as 
" Anonymus Valesii," says (c. ii) that Constantine was 
" born of Helena, a very common [vilissimal woman, in 
the town of Naissus." Zosimus, a century later, and a 

* The Greek original of the " Chronicle" is lost, and Jerome informs us 
that he has added many details in the Latin version which we now have. 



268 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

pagan critic of Constantine, says (ii. 8) that he was 
" born of a woman who was not respectable [^a-e/nv)]'] 
and not legally married to Constantius," and he later 
observes that Maxentius resented the raising to the throne 
of a man whose mother was " not a matron." Finally, the 
early mediaeval monk, Zonaras, says (" Annals," xiii, i) : 
" Some say that she was lawfully married to Constantius 
and divorced . . . others that she was not a legitimate wife 
but a paramour." The grave and weighty Eutropius, 
writing in the generation after Constantine, says that 
he was born of " a somewhat ambiguous [obscurion'] 
marriage." 

The Benedictines had an ample authority, both Christian 
and pagan, for their view, and only one argument is 
advanced in disproof of it by modern writers. Several 
of the historians tell us that, when Constantius was made 
Caesar, he was compelled by the Emperor to "divorce" 
Helena, and, it is said, divorce implies marriage. The 
argument is hardly conclusive. When Eusebius (or 
Jerome) tells us that the Caesars were compelled to dis- 
miss their "wives," he adds, on the same page, that 
Helena was not a wife, but a concubine. He means 
merely that Constantius was forced to dismiss Helena 
and wed the daughter of Maximian, and does not imply 
that any legal form of divorce was employed. It is quite 
open to us to interpret the other authority, Aurelius 
Victor, in the same way ; and Zonaras, the only other writer 
who could be quoted, expressly leaves it open whether 
Helena was married or not. In any case, the single 
authority of Aurelius Victor cannot outweigh the others, 
and even his words do not necessarily imply a legal divorce 
on the part of both Caesars. 

But there is another aspect of the question, which is 
usually overlooked. Could there be a valid marriage 
between Helena and Constantius in Roman law ? When 
we regard the subject from this point of view, we see 
that Constantius could not possibly have married Helena 
before the birth of Constantine, and, unless her legal 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 269 

condition was subsequently altered by a special enactment, 
their union could never become a valid marriage. As I 
have earlier observed, the strict and ancient forms of 
Roman marriage had fallen very generally out of use 
under the Emperors. They had had the effect of putting 
the wife under the despotic power of the husband, and 
Roman feeling in regard to the position of woman had 
entirely changed. Looser forms of marriage, which evaded 
the older tyranny of the husband, were generally employed 
and legally recognized. If a man and woman lived together 
uninterruptedly for twelve months — without three nights* 
interruption — their union might become a valid marriage. 
Below this was the legally recognized concubine. The 
ease with which Christian writers admitted that Helena 
was a concubine is due to the fact that the Church, as 
well as the law, permitted a concubine, if a man had no 
wife. As late as the year 400, the important provincial 
Council of Toledo decided that such a man and his con- 
cubine were to be admitted to communion. St. Augustine, 
we shall see, went even further. Below these, again, 
were the ordinary paramours, the mistresses of a month 
or the playthings of an hour, which Stoic and Christian 
equally condemned. 

The real question we have to decide is, therefore, 
whether the long association of Constantius and Helena 
could ever be recognized as a valid marriage in Roman 
law. That they went through any form of marriage in 
273 could only occur to a writer who knows nothing of 
Roman law or practice. A young officer, taking a girl 
from a tavern in a small provincial town on his route, 
would not dream ot any such ceremony ; and no ceremony 
would have been valid in Roman law. Whatever the 
legal condition of Constantius was, Helena was, to Roman 
law, a barbarian, or peregrina^ and could not contract a 
valid marriage.^ We need little acquaintance with Roman 

* One of the most authoritative works on Roman institutions, Marquardt 
and Mommsen's " Handbuch," says this emphatically : " Ehen, bei welchen 
der eine Theil der ROmischen Biirgerschaft, der Andere den Latinern jiingeren 



270 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

life to imagine what happened. Constantius felt for the 
young woman he found at the country inn a more tender 
sentiment than that usually entertained by the young 
centurion or tribune on travel, and he took her to live 
with him. I do not see how this relation ever could 
become a valid marriage, nor is there any clear proof 
that they were ever legally divorced. At the most, it 
remains " a questionable marriage," as Eutropius calls it, 
and it began as a free union. 

From Nicomedia Constantius's troop seems to have 
passed, possibly after sharing Aurelian's triumph at Rome, 
to Thrace, where Constantine is said to have been born 
in the year 274. Helena narrowly missed the dignity of 
Empress a few years later, as Carus had some disposition 
to leave the purple to Constantius. The mother of Con- 
stantius had been a niece of the Emperor Claudius, and 
his father was one of the chief nobles of Dardania. But 
the accession of Carinus dispelled this hope, and Helena 
followed her husband from province to province, and 
grade to grade, until, in 292, he was selected for the lofty 
position of Csesar of the West. But with the purple came 
a command that he must dismiss his concubine, and marry 
the stepdaughter of Maximian, Flavia Maximiana Theodora. 
From that date until the year of her son's brilliant triumph 
Helena passes into complete obscurity. 

Meantime other Empresses occupy the pages of the 
historian. Theodora, of whom we have just spoken, is 
one of those Empresses whose propriety of conduct and 
mediocrity of person have not attracted the lamp of the 
historian. She was the daughter of Eutropia, the Syrian 
wife of Maximian, by a former husband. Three boys and 
three girls came of her union with Constantius, and she 
seems to have been a worthy consort of that judicious 

Rechtes oder den Peregrinen angehOrte, sind nach ROmischen Recht nicht 
gultig" (vii. 29). GOteke, in a special study of the subject (" Constantinum 
honeste et ex legitime matrimonio natum "), says that special edicts made it 
impossible for an officer to marry in the province in which he served. He 
believes that the effect of these would not be permanent, but he fails to 
consider Helena's disability as z. peregrina. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 271 

and happy ruler. The full Imperial title passed to them 
when Maximian abdicated in 305, and the handsome and 
spirited Constantine joined them at Gessoriacum (Boulogne), 
after his romantic flight from Nicomedia, in that or the 
following year. They crossed to Britain, and suppressed 
a rebellion that was in progress. But Constantius died 
at Eboracum (York) in the summer of 306, and the un- 
ambitious Theodora passes from our sight. 

Constantius had, with a last display of prudence, 
preferred his eldest son to the legitimate children of his 
wife, and probably little money needed to be distributed 
among the legions to ensure that they should recognize 
his superiority. Constantine was then in his early man- 
hood, a commanding and graceful figure, in the finest 
phase of his character, and the troops followed him with 
alacrity from the cold mists of north Britain to more 
genial and more cultivated Gaul. From Gaul the young 
Caesar watched with close interest the quarrels in which 
his colleagues prepared to devour each other. In February 
of 307 he heard that Severus had opened his veins, and 
left the purple in the hands of the crafty Maximian and 
his son Maxentius. Within a few weeks Maximian was in 
Gaul, seeking an alliance with Constantine. He brought 
with him his pretty and charming daughter, Fausta, and 
presently she was married at Aries, with great pomp, to 
Constantine, the stepson of her half-sister. The old man 
returned to his intrigues in Italy, from which he was 
shortly ejected by his son : Galerius expelled him from 
Illyricum, where he had taken shelter ; and he returned 
to the court of his son-in-law in Gaul. 

'The portrait-bust of Maximian might be confused with 
that of a modern pugilist, but he had, in addition to 
strength and ambition, a restless disposition to intrigue. 
To rust in a court full of women — for we may confidently 
place in the court of Constantine his wife, mother, step- 
mother, mother-in-law, and three young half-sisters, if not 
also his concubine — was to him an intolerable experience, 
and he took the first opportunity of enlivening his sur- 



272 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

roundings. An inroad of the barbarians in the north 
drew away the young Emperor with much of his army, 
and Maximian rebelled. He gave out a report that 
Constantine was dead, emptied the treasury into the 
hands of the soldiers, and assumed the purple mantle 
once more. But Constantine returned with the stride of 
a giant, and Maximian shut himself in Marseilles, which 
was presently surrendered. The aged intriguer returned 
to the palace, tried to corrupt the loyalty of his daughter, 
and brought upon himself the punishment of his crimes. 

It is a peculiarity of the time that, the more remote an 
historian is from an event, the more he knows about it. 
Eutropius and Zosimus merely know that Fausta revealed 
her father's plots to her husband ; Zonaras, of the twelfth 
century, is able to tell us the whole story. Maximian, he 
says, persuaded his daughter to have the guards removed 
from the Imperial chamber at night. Then, telling the 
night-attendants that he wished to relate to Constantine 
a remarkable dream he had had, he entered the chamber 
and plunged his dagger into the sleeping figure on the 
bed. Rushing out to announce the fall of the tyrant, 
however, he found himself in face of Constantine, Fausta, 
and the guards. Fausta had been true to her husband, 
and it was " a vile eunuch " that Maximian had slain in 
the Emperor's bed. Whatever truth there may be in 
this romance, we may accept the statement that Fausta 
betrayed his plots, and Maximian came to the end of his 
career. Zosimus sends him into exile, and makes him 
die a natural death at Tarsus. Lactantius, with a stronger 
sense of propriety, tells us that he strangled himself, and it 
is the general belief that Constantine did not permit him 
to leave Gaul alive. 

Galerius died in the following year (311), leaving the 
Eastern Empire to Licinius and Maximin, while Maxentius 
ruled in Italy and Africa. Four Empresses now lived in 
the court of Constantine, but before we seek to penetrate 
the mystery of their relations to each other, we must 
briefly accompany Constantine in his rise to the position 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 273 

of supreme monarch. Maxentius, who had expelled his 
father from Italy, now affected a filial anger against his 
destroyer, and, after some exasperated correspondence, sent 
toward Gaul an army of nearly 200,000 men. Constantine 
boldly led 40,000 of his soldiers across the Alps, wore 
down the strength of his opponent in successive encoun- 
ters, and, within a few months, exhibited the grisly head 
of Maxentius to the astonished and delighted Romans. 
He was now master of the Western Empire. Devoting two 
months to the settlement of Roman affairs, he returned to 
Milan to meet his Eastern colleague Licinius. His half- 
sister Constantia was married there to Licinius, who 
returned to Asia with his bride, to crush Maximin, and to 
perpetrate the melancholy tragedies over which we shud- 
dered in the last chapter. Anastasia, the second daughter 
of Constantius, was married to the Senator Bassianus. 
Constantine made him Caesar, but put no troops at his 
command — he had just suppressed the Praetorian Guards 
at Rome — and refused to grant him the authority that had 
hitherto been associated with the title of Caesar. Bassianus 
corresponded angrily with Licinius, and before the end 
of 315 the Emperors of the East and West were in arms 
against each other. 

It would be interesting to know what share the daugh- 
ters of Constantius had in promoting these disorders. 
The correspondence of Bassianus and Licinius suggests a 
correspondence of their wives, and, when Bassianus was 
deposed and disgraced, we may assume that Constantia 
was not insensible of the misfortune of her younger sister. 
The superior age and ability of Constantine would hardly 
reconcile the legitimate children of Constantius to their 
position of dependence. Constantia is sometimes repre- 
sented as a pious peacemaker, but we do not find her in 
that character until her husband's power is irremediably 
broken, after the second war with Constantine. She fled 
in great haste with her husband after the first defeat, and 
returned with him to Nicomedia, to rule his reduced 
dominions. 
18 



2/4 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

The court-life of the West flowed with uneventful 
smoothness in the eight years between the first and second 
war with Licinius. The only break in the monotony is 
the birth of three sons and three daughters in quick suc- 
cession. Zosimus emphatically asserts that these were not 
the children of Fausta, but of a concubine, whom Con- 
stantine put to death on a charge of adultery. We are 
naturally disposed to regard this as a piece of reprehensible 
malice on the part of the pagan writer, but even the most 
cautious judgment will find ground for reflection in the 
circumstance that Fausta had borne no children whatever 
for the first nine years of her marriage, and then children 
begin to appear with astonishing rapidity. We know that 
Constantine had had a concubine, named Minervina, before 
he married Fausta. Her son Crispus lived at the court. 
It would not be entirely surprising if Minervina had 
returned to the court, to rear the Imperial dynasty which 
Fausta failed to provide, and was eventually destroyed in 
one of Constantine's bursts of temper.^ 

In the Eastern court the young Empress had, if we 
trust the authorities, a more adventurous career. Con- 
stantia cannot have been more than seventeen or eighteen 
at the time of her marriage, but she was a woman of spirit 
and ability, as well as virtue and beauty. It is said that 
she, with the whole court, became a Christian after Con- 
stantine's victory over Maxentius, but the story of the 
miraculous sign in the heavens — a story that is not found 
in any form until thirty years afterwards — is now rejected, 
and the conversion of Constantine is spread over many 
years. At Nicomedia, however, where Constantia occupied 
the magnificent palace built by Diocletian, she met the 

* The question may be raised whether St. Augustine had not the case of 
Constantine in mind when, in his moral treatise "De Bono Conjugali," he 
refuses to condemn a man who, having a barren wife, takes a concubine in 
addition, to provide a family. It is clear, at least, that early Christian opinion 
was not fixed. Gibbon again improves upon Christian writers by holding 
that Minervina was an earlier wife, not a concubine, of Constantine ; but, as 
Professor Bury points out, the document on which he relies does not apply to 
that Emperor. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 275 

accomplished and courtly Eusebius, and induced Licinius 
to allow him the position of Bishop of Nicomedia. Two 
things, it is said, then transpired in the character of 
Licinius to excite her disgust. He not only persecuted the 
Christians, but made equal war upon virtue. In brief, he, 
like all the other persecutors, is depicted by the flowing 
pen of Lactantius as an erotic ogre. His eye falls on a 
Christian maiden, of dazzling beauty and virtue, in the 
suite of Constantia, and he sends an officer to corrupt 
her. She tells Constantia, who dresses her as a young 
military officer, and sends her, with a splendid equipage, 
to take an imaginary Imperial commission to a remote 
region. In the distant city of Amasia she is embarrassed 
by her masculine hosts, and confides in the bishop. 
Finally, a letter of hers to Constantia is intercepted, and 
she escapes by a very timely death from the embraces or 
the tortures of Licinius. 

Of these wicked ways, and of her husband's hostility 
to the Christians, Constantia is said to have kept her 
brother well informed, and, when Licinius committed the 
greater enormity of refusing to surrender fugitive offenders 
to the vengeance of Constantine, the legions were once 
more led toward the Bosphorus. Several disastrous battles 
crippled the power of Licinius, ajid he retired sullenly to 
Nicomedia. Whether at his request or no, Constantia 
interceded for him, and Constantine swore to respect his 
life. In assigning the blame for the war we may, perhaps, 
hesitate between the contradictory charges of the opposing 
schools of historians, though modern writers usually follow 
the neutral and sober Eutropius, and ascribe it to the 
ambition of Constantine. But there is a sharper indict- 
ment of Constantine's conduct after the war. Licinius, 
in surrendering, had relied on the oath of the conqueror. 
He had been stripped of the purple, and exiled to Thessa- 
lonica, but he was put to death there shortly afterwards. 
Zosimus and Eutropius say that this was done " in spite 
of the oath," and the statement of Constantine's more 
resolute admirers, that Licinius was discovered in treason- 



276 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

able intrigue, has not carried much conviction with later 
historians. 

Constantia passed, with her daughter Helena and her 
boy Licinius, to the court of her brother, who was now 
(324) master of the whole Empire. The remark of Zosimus, 
that Constantine degenerated into the most wilful license 
after his attainment of supreme power — a remark feebly 
supported by the assurance of the cautious Eutropius that 
" prosperity somewhat altered his character " — contrasts 
quaintly with the circumstance that he now became the 
Imperial patron of the Christian religion. Here, again, we 
hesitate between conflicting accounts, or rival romances. 
According to the mediaeval Christian writer Zonaras, who 
supplies a remarkable amount of detail that was unknown 
to contemporary historians, the conversion of Constantine 
had a picturesque origin. On his return to Rome, after 
crushing Licinius, he was afflicted with a painful eruption, 
and his pagan physicians prescribed a bath in the warm 
blood of children. '* At once," says the lively writer, 
"children were collected from the whole Empire," and 
dispatched to the palace. The lamentations of the mothers 
fell on the ear of Constantine, touched his heart, and he 
left paganism in disgust for Christianity. 

The pagan Greek, Zosimus, who at least faithfully 
reproduces the pagan gossip of his time — as, on this point, 
we know from Sozomen — gives us the legend of his school. 
After committing certain murders, which will occupy us 
presently, Constantine applied to the priests of the temple 
of Jupiter for purification. The priests sternly replied 
that their lustral water had no power to obliterate the 
trace of such a crime, and Constantine turned in despair 
to an Egyptian who was known to "the women-folk" of 
the palace. The Christian priest, as he seems to have 
been, declared that his religion contained the desired 
remedy, and Constantine embraced it. 

It will be seen that we now pursue our biographic way 
amid a forest of legends. Happily, we may reject both 
these stories as, at least, anachronisms. Constantine was 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 277 

already a Christian in 324. He had abolished the decrees 
of persecution in the year 313, and had taken a keen 
interest in Church matters for some years. The whole 
court gradually accepted the new faith. Helena, Eusebius 
tells us, and Fausta for some time opposed the change 
of religion, but Helena at least was converted. Eutropia 
appears in the East a few years later as a zealous opponent 
of paganism. From their several and ample purses the 
money poured into the lean coffers of the Church, and 
the conversion of the Empire proceeded rapidly. Villages 
that embraced Christianity were raised to the dignity of 
cities ; nobles and officers were encouraged by promotion ; 
and ordinary citizens were rewarded with a baptismal 
robe and a piece of gold. 

It is not for us to inquire into the obscure question of 
Constantine's real attitude. Professor Bury and other 
eminent authorities believe that his creed was a liberal, 
or vague, one until his death. Years afterwards we find 
him building pagan temples at Constantinople, and he did 
not disdain the Imperial title of Sovereign Pontiff of the 
old religion. On the other hand, the details collected by 
Mr. Firth show a very real interest in the Church. He 
opened the great Council of Nicaea in the year 325, and 
reverently kissed the wounds of those who had suffered 
in the persecution. Yet even amid this evidence of ortho- 
doxy the hesitating student will find trace of his liberality. 
In the letter which he sent to the Catholic bishops he 
complained that the subject of their vehement quarrel with 
the Arians was " quite insignificant, and entirely dispro- 
portionate to such a quarrel." The question at issue was 
the divinity of Christ. His experience at the Council 
would give him a larger sense of its importance. 

From the benedictions of the prelates and the embraces 
of the martyrs Constantine returned to Europe, and, 
within a year, apparently, his court w^as rent by a tragedy 
that has left an irremovable cloud on his memory. He 
had gone to Rome, with the court, to celebrate the twentieth 
anniversary of his accession. The city exulted in the rare 



278 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

indulgence of his presence, and the games and festivities 
warmed it with its old enthusiasm. The Empire was 
united and at peace, and the growing brood of children 
gave promise of an unending dynasty, Crispus, Con- 
stantine's eldest son, was now a popular and promising 
commander, clothed in the mantle of a Caesar. Two of 
the sons of Fausta, or her substitute, were Caesars. Then 
there was the twelve-year-old son of Constantia. Over 
these watched the aged Helena and Eutropia, and the 
mothers and aunts of the younger children. 

In the middle of the festivity Rome was startled to 
hear that Crispus had been arrested, by his father's 
command, and exiled to Pola, in Istria. From that remote 
and solitary region the report at length came that he had 
been put to death. Every eye was turned on the palace, 
and before long — most of the historians say— the gay 
figure of the beautiful young Empress disappeared, and 
the report spread that she had been brutally suffocated 
in the steam of a dense vapour-bath. The horror was 
increased, and the prospect of a humane interpretation 
lessened, when it was learned that the innocent child 
of Constantia also had been put to death. Such is the 
grave and mysterious tragedy of Constantine's mature 
years. As Fausta has been heavily indicted by those who 
have sought to defend her husband, and Helena impeached 
by his accusers, we may glance at the evidence on which 
one's verdict must be based. 

There are partisan historians who would cast doubt 
on the whole story ; there are more serious historians, 
such as Gibbon (who again gallantly opposes the critics), 
who say that Fausta, at least, was not slain ; and the rest 
are divided in opinion as to whether it was a just execution 
or a ghastly crime. The first two opinions are now 
untenable. There is no serious dispute that Crispus and 
Licinius were put to death. That Fausta was killed is 
now equally established. Gibbon relied upon a certain 
anonymous writer to show that Fausta was living long after- 
wards, but it has been shown that the writer is not speaking 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 279 

of Fausta and Constantine. Moreover, Dr. Seeck, in a 
special study of the evidence (" Die Verwandtenmorde 
Constantins des Grossen," Zeitschrift fur Wiss. Theol.^ 
Bd. 33), has shown that the coins of Fausta and Crispus, 
unlike those of the other members of the Imperial family, 
end before the year 330. Dr. Gorres, who held Gibbon's 
view, consents that this proof is decisive. The only serious 
question is that of motive or justification. 

Let us glance at the authorities, in the order of their 
nearness to the event. Bishop Eusebius is naturally 
silent ; he professes to give only the things that edify in 
the life of Constantine, and is writing almost in his son's 
court. Eutropius, the soundest and most impartial writer 
of the next generation, says (x. 6) that the character of 
Constantine " was somewhat changed with prosperity," 
and that " following the exigencies of the situation 
\jiecessitudines rermn], he put to death, first his excellent 
son and the son of his sister, a boy of promising character, 
then his wife and a number of friends." St. Jerome, in 
his Latin version of the " Chronicle " of Eusebius, writes, 
at the year 329, that " Crispus, the son of Constantine, 
and Licinius the younger, the son of Constantia, are most 
cruelly put to death in the ninth year of his reign," and 
three years later we read : " Constantine put to death 
his wife Fausta." ^ Dr. Seeck believes that we have here 
only an echo of Eutropius, but Jerome would hardly add 
"most cruelly" on so cautious a narrative. Aurelius 
Victor, a contemporary of Eutropius, says that Crispus 
" was put to death by his father for some unknown reason," 
and Orosius, the Christian historian, merely observes 
that Constantine put Crispus and Licinius to death. 

From these earlier writers we learn only that the deaths 
were cruel, and the motive unknown, but later writers 
have successively built up a story that has provoked endless 

' It is from the confusion of dates that I ascribe the words confidently 
to Jerome, and not Eusebius The words " ninth year " can only refer to 
the ninth year of the Ceesarate of Crispus, or 326. The interval of three 
years has no significance in view of the confusion of dates. 



280 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

discussion. Sidonius Apollinaris, the most cultivated and 
liberal Christian writer of the fifth century, says, with the 
confidence of a parenthesis (Ep. v), that Crispus was 
poisoned, and Fausta killed in a vapour-bath; and that 
a couplet was fixed on the palace-gate recalling the crimes 
of Nero. The epitomist of Aurelius Victor declares that 
Crispus was put to death at the instigation of Fausta, 
and Fausta was " thereupon " killed in a vapour-bath, as 
Helena bitterly reproached Constantine for the death of 
Crispus. Zosimus (ii. 29) says: "With no regard for the 
law of nature he put to death his son Crispus, on the 
ground that he was suspected of intimacy with Fausta," 
and, when Helena heavily reproached him, he, " as if to 
console her," suffocated Fausta in an overheated bath. 
Philostorgius, a Christian writer of the same (fifth) century, 
declares that Fausta was put to death because she was 
caught in adultery with a groom. The story culminates in 
the twelfth-century annalist Zonaras. After telling his 
incredible legend about Constantine and the babies, he 
represents Fausta in the character of Potiphar's wife. She 
conceived a passion for the handsome Caesar, was repelled 
by him, and then denounced him to Constantine as having 
offered violence to her. Crispus was put to death. Then 
Constantine learned in some way — Helena is left to the 
imagination — that he had been deceived, and he angrily 
killed Fausta in a vapour-bath. 

It is remarkable how many grave writers have favoured 
this legend of the mediaeval writer,^ yet, besides its obvious 
growth through the centuries, it has the fatal weakness 
of throwing no light whatever on the murder of Licinius, 
the son of Constantine's most cherished sister. We are 
reduced to conjecture in face of this mysterious and 
terrible tragedy. That the youths met with some violent 

^ Gibbon, Professor Bury, and Mr. Firth make Zosimus coincide with 
Zonaras. The reader will see from my literal translation of his words that 
he differs very materially. He does not suggest that Fausta accused 
Crispus, or that she was really guilty of any misconduct ; but he pointedly 
accuses Helena. 




FAUSTA 




FLAVIA HELENA 

ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM' 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 281 

death at the hands of the Emperor, that Helena bitterly 
remonstrated with him, and that the savage suffocation 
of Fausta followed this remonstrance, seems to be clear. 
We may further conclude with some confidence, from the 
persistent rumour of amorous relations, that this charge 
was allowed to reach the outside world in extenuation of 
the murders. But it is suspected by many historians, and 
seems to be suggested by the obscure language of Eutro- 
pius, that the real motive was political. 

Crispus was in great favour with both the people and 
the troops, and had distinguished himself in the war with 
Licinius. If anything happened to Constantine, who was 
in his fifty-second year, Crispus had a clear prospect of 
the throne. It would not be unnatural for Fausta to 
resent this, and one is tempted to see, either an effect 
of her importunity or a proof of Constantine's jealousy 
of his son, in the fact that Constantine took away the 
province of Gaul from Crispus, without compensation, in 
323, and gave it to the eldest of his legitimate sons. 
From that time Crispus was retained in idleness, and 
probably discontent, under the eye of his father. He 
would be a natural focus for all the dissatisfaction in the 
Empire, and the Romans, and pagans generally, regarded 
Constantine and his family with anger and disdain on 
account of their abandonment of the old religion. By 
the year 326 Constantine was in a state of extraordinary 
nervousness and suspicion. Before going to Rome he 
issued an edict in which he revealed his frame of mind 
to the whole Empire. At Rome he flouted the most 
cherished customs of the city, and may well have incurred 
fresh murmurs. Something occurred that brought his 
suspicion of Crispus — who may not have become a Chris- 
tian — to an acute stage, and he condemned him to exile 
and death. This theory is also the only one to explain, 
with any plausibility, the execution of young Licinius. 
He was the only other rival of Constantine's legitimate 
sons. It is impossible for us to say whether Crispus had 
incurred any guilt or no, but the silence of the earlier 



282 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

writers and panegyrists is a grave circumstance. If there 
had been plausible evidence of conspiracy they v^ould 
not have remained silent. In any case, the sentence on 
Crispus was harsh and unjustifiable, and the execution of a 
twelve-year-old boy was a piece of brutality that only 
the worse Emperors would have perpetrated. 

The murder of Fausta is even more perplexing. Even 
if the late and negligible stories of Philostorgius and 
Zonaras were true, she was not executed, but brutally 
murdered. The only firm point in the conflicting evidence 
is the persistent association of her death with the anger 
of Helena. We have no evidence of any value in regard 
to her relation to Crispus ; but the words of Zosimus, 
which are not inconsistent with the earlier writers, en- 
able us to extend the above theory to her. Constantine, 
on this view, put Crispus and Licinius to death because 
they were possible nuclei of the conspiracy which he 
believed to pervade the Empire. Adopting a familiar 
device, however, he concealed his motive under a charge 
of amorous irregularity, or too great a familiarity with the 
Empress. Helena, who was greatly attached to Crispus, 
seems to have insisted that, if there was any guilt, both 
were guilty, and Constantine savagely completed his 
work by murdering his wife. The Christian historians 
describe Fausta as opposing Constantine's progress in 
his new faith, and, as we have no evidence that Crispus 
had embraced it, one may not implausibly wonder whether 
the two did not attract the favour of the pagan Romans, 
to the extreme anger of the Emperor. No charge against 
Fausta was made public. During the lifetime of Con- 
stantine's eldest son, Julian described her, in one of his 
orations, as not only one of the most beautiful, but one of 
the most virtuous and noble ladies of her time. Even if we 
make allowance for the licensed flattery of a panegyrist, 
the description would be too glaringly inconsistent with 
any Imperial theory of her infidelity. She was probably 
in her thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year at the time when 
she met her appalling death. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 283 

Constantine hastened to remove the gloom}'', stricken 
court from the disdainful eyes of Rome. The pagans 
pointed with fierce scorn to these fruits of the new re- 
ligion, as they expressed it. One day it was found that 
some one had fastened a Latin couplet — written, the pagans 
of a later day boasted, by the hand of the Emperor's 
chief counsellor, Ablabius — on the gate of the palace : 

Say ye the Golden Age of Saturn breaks again? 
Of Nero's bloody hue these jewels are. 

Either at once, or in the course of the next year, the 
court broke up. Constantine went to direct the building 
of the new capital of the West, which was to bear his 
name. Later pagans said that he fled from the theatre 
of his crimes and the scorn of Rome, but the ample lines 
of Constantinople had been traced long before, and the 
site had been chosen for its strategical importance. Helena 
sought the land in which Christ had lived and died, and her 
pious munificence won for her the halo of sanctity. The 
legend of her finding the cross does not appear until 
seventy years afterwards, and Eusebiiis tells us that it 
was Constantine, not she, who found the sepulchre and 
built a church over it. But Helena, who had now great 
wealth, covered the land with churches, and returned 
with a great repute for piety. She died soon after her 
return — in 328, Tillemont thinks — having passed her 
eightieth year. 

Europia also went on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and 
seems to have settled in the East. We find her a few 
years later urging Constantine to scatter the pagans who 
are defiling some sacred spot with their impure cere- 
monies. Theodora seems to have died, at some unknown 
date, before the year of the murders. Constantia died 
in, or about, the year 329. Her Arian friend Eusebius 
had been banished, at the triumph of the Athanasians, 
but she obtained his recall, and adhered to his Unitarian 
creed. In her last hours she succeeded in recommending 



284 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

an Arian priest to Constantine, and prolonged the religi- 
ous struggle. We pass to a new generation of Empresses, 
and may dismiss briefly the ten years which remain of 
Constantine's rule and introduce us to the events of the 
next chapter. 

In the month of May of the year 330, the new city 
of Constantinople was solemnly dedicated. The curious 
reader will find in Gibbon a splendid restoration of its 
princely proportions, its stores of art gathered from all 
parts of the Empire, its superb palace, its great hippo- 
drome, its churches and temples, its spacious fora, and 
its lofty column of porphyry, surmounted by a gigantic 
statue, in which the head of Constantine replaced that of 
Apollo, and the various attributes of the god he still 
admired were hesitatingly redeemed by emblems of the 
jealous God of his new faith. The enormous sums ab- 
sorbed in the building of the new city were regarded by 
the pagans as one of the causes of the decay of the 
Empire, and the bitter strife of Arians and Athanasians, 
which distracted it, irritated their resentment. But their 
day was closing. The arguments with which they clung 
to a Jupiter and a Venus in whom they no longer be- 
lieved were hollow; the rewards of conversion were 
great. The grey gods saw their crowds of worshippers 
becoming thinner and less joyous. The Empire lifted the 
humble cross into the sunlight from Persia to Britain. 

The last decade of Constantine's life was inglorious. 
We might distrust the partial and severe accusations of 
Zosimus, but the substance of his charge is found in the 
other authorities. His vast and hurried enterprise in 
building forced him to lay heavy burdens on his enfeebled 
Empire, and we have the authority of Ammianus Mar- 
cellinus that he " encouraged those about him to open 
devouring jaws" in a lamentable degree. Conversion 
was the first right to favour and wealth. The later 
Emperor Julian, we are not surprised to find, pours 
acrid satire on him. In the treatise (" Caesares ") in which 
he introduces the Emperors of Rome to the Olympic 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 285 

court, he makes Constantine turn to the goddess Luxury, 
as the one congenial deity, and she introduces him only 
to her sister Prodigality. He ridicules Constantine's 
womanly finery in dress and jewels, his elaborate crown 
of false hair, his complete lapse into effeminate ways. 
Aurelius Victor gives us the proverbial judgment of the 
next generation on Constantine : in his first decade he 
was admirable, in his second decade thievish, in his third 
decade a squanderer. He made the final blunder of — 
without naming a successor — dividing the Empire among 
his sons and nephews, of gravely unequal character, and 
died in 337, leaving them and their supporters to engage 
in a murderous struggle for supremacy. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 

WHEN the announcement of Constantine's death had 
been borne by swift couriers to the distant pro- 
vinces, and the body, in its golden coffin, had 
been transferred to Constantinople, there was a nervous 
rush of aspiring Emperors and Empresses to the capital. 
The unification of the Empire under Constantine had cost 
the State some hundred and fifty thousand of its finest 
soldiers, who perished in civil warfare while powerful 
nations pressed against its yielding frontiers. In his later 
years he had so distributed these provinces, whose unity 
had been so dearly purchased, among his sons and nephews, 
worthy and unworthy, that dismemberment was certain to 
follow his death. His eldest son, Constantine, now in his 
twenty-first year, ruled Gaul and Britain ; Constantius, 
the second son, a youth of twenty, was the Caesar of the 
East ; the third son, Constans, aged seventeen, held sway 
over Italy and Africa. His nephew Delmatius, also entitled 
Csesar, controlled Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, and the 
younger nephew Hannibalian bore the ornate title of King 
of Kings in Pontus and Cappadocia. The two brothers of 
Constantine, and the husbands of his two sisters, were not 
left without a share of the Imperial provision. 

The race to Constantinople after the death of the 
Emperor may be imagined, but the suddenness and horror 
of the consequent tragedy must have sobered even the most 
frivolous, Constantius, the second son, was the first to 
arrive, and to him the conduct of the impressive funeral 
was entrusted. The members of the family gathered round 

286 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 287 

the marble palace from all quarters of the Empire, and the 
shade of Constantine continued for some months to rule 
the State, until their conflicting claims should be adjusted. 
Julius Constantius and Delmatius, the legitimate heirs of 
Constantius Chlorus, who had been thrust aside thirty 
years before by the vigorous son of Minervina, were now 
men in the prime of life. The younger son of the latter, 
Hannibalian, the " King of Kings," strutted in a scarlet and 
gold mantle, and had married the fiery and ambitious young 
daughter of the late Emperor, Constantina. Anastasia, 
Constantine's sister, brought her husband, the "Patrician" 
Optatus. The partition of power seemed a formidable 
task. But in the weeks that succeeded Constantine's death 
a new and sinister power arose, and its secret designs pre- 
pared a ghastly simplification of the problem. 

Constantius became insensibly the central figure of the 
drama. A callous youth, with little strength of character, 
he was selected by the eunuchs and corrupt officers of 
Constantine's court as a likely instrument of their plans. 
It was agreed that the interests of these officers and of the 
sons of Constantine would be best served by a removal of 
all the other competitors, and a diabolical plot was devised. 
The details are given at length only by the Christian 
historian Philostorgius, of the next century, and are re- 
garded with reserve ; but an Arian writer would hardly 
inculpate an Arian bishop and an Arian monarch without 
some just ground. His story is that Constantine left a 
will in which he declared that he had been poisoned by his 
two half-brothers. The will was given to Bishop Eusebius. 
When the brothers were eager to see the will of Constantine, 
Eusebius is said to have discovered a fine piece of casuistry. 
He put the will in the hands of the dead Emperor, and 
covered it with his robes, so that he might, without injury 
to his delicate conscience, assure the brothers that Con- 
stantine had indeed shown him a will, but he had returned 
it into his hands. The will — or a will — was now produced, 
and the people and army were assured by their dead ruler 
that he had been poisoned by his family. 



288 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

The story is regarded with suspicion by most historians. 
For the reason I have given, and because it is the only 
plausible explanation of what followed, it seems probable 
that such a will was produced and published by Constantius. 
It was probably forged by the palace officials. Whether 
they and the sons of Constantine used this device or no, 
they somehow directed the tempestuous anger of the troops 
upon the older princes and their families, and extinguished 
their claims in a brutal massacre. Julian casts the blame on 
Constantius, admitting that he acted under compulsion, and 
the other fourth-century writers do not differ. Constantius 
" permitted," rather than " commanded." The corrupt 
power behind the throne directed the murders, and the sons 
of Constantine purchased a larger dominion by the blood of 
their uncles and cousins. The two uncles, seven cousins, 
and other distinguished men, were included in the bloody 
list. Then the three Imperial youths divided the Empire 
between them, and departed to their provinces. 

The wives of the eldest and the youngest of the brothers 
are unknown to us, and the first wife of Constantius is so 
little known that we may pass rapidly over a number o 
years. The Imperial sisters of Constantine — except Con- 
stantia, whom we have considered— enter little in the 
history of the time. Anastasia disappears after the murder 
of her husband. Eutropia will presently mingle her blood 
with that of her insurgent son on the soil of Italy. Con- 
stantina, the daughter of Constantine who had married 
Hannibalian, and who already bore the title of Augusta, 
retired into a long widowhood, from which we shall find 
her emerging later in a monstrous character. 

Constantius had been married to his cousin Galla in 
336. She seems to have been the daughter of Julius 
Constantius, since Julian says that her father and brother 
were included in the massacre. Her personality is never 
outlined for us in the historical writings of the time, and 
we are left to imagine her shuddering or languishing in 
the arms that were stained with the blood of her family. 
She died some time before 350, as Magnentius offered his 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 289 

daughter to Constantius in that year. We have, therefore, 
no Empress who can engage our attention until 353, and 
may be content with a slight summary of the events which 
lead on to the appearance of Eusebia and the reappearance 
of the repulsive Constantina. 

Three years after the partition of the Empire Con- 
stantine and Constans quarrelled about their territory. 
The elder brother led his troops into the dominion of 
Constans, and was slain ; and his provinces were added 
to those of Constans. The character of the youngest son 
of Constantine was gross and intolerable. He revived 
the lowest vice of his pagan predecessors, and his open 
parade of the handsome barbarian youths whom he bought, 
or attracted to his frivolous court, disgusted his officers. 
In the beginning of the year 350 they rebelled against 
him. A banquet was given at Augustodunum (Autun) to 
the notables of the town and the officers of the camp, 
and at a late hour, when the abundant wine had warmed 
the hearts and obscured the judgment of the diners, the 
commander of two of the chief legions, Magnentius, was 
brought before them in a purple robe. Constans awoke 
from his vices to find that he had lost the throne and the 
army, and fled toward Spain. He was overtaken and 
slain. Some blood-curse seemed to hang over the house 
of Constantine. Constantius, who had been long occupied 
in resisting the Persians, now wheeled round his troops, 
and faced the usurper. 

In the long struggle that followed there were two 
incidents of interest for us. Constantina, the Imperial 
widow, was living in restless impotence at the time. 
Between the rebellious provinces of the West and the loyal 
provinces of the East was the intermediate district between 
the Danube and the Greek sea. Constantina, it is said, 
instigated the commander of the troops in these regions, 
Vetranio, to assume the purple. What we shall see of her 
character presently will dispose us to beheve that she 
meditated a return to power through Vetranio, but Con- 
stantius astutely disarmed and exiled him, and accepted 
19 



290 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

her explanation that she had acted with the pure aim of 
resisting the advance of the Western usurper. Constan- 
tine's sister Eutropia also appears in the struggle. Her 
son Nepotian assumed the purple at Rome, and led out 
a motley army to attack Magnentius. They were quickly 
annihilated, and mother and son — two of the few remaining 
members of Constantine's family — were slain. 

The interest of the student of the time is divided 
between the clash of armies and the not wholly bloodless 
conflicts of theologies. We are concerned with neither, 
and need only observe that Constantius defeated Mag- 
nentius, after a long and costly struggle — in one battle 
54,000 Roman soldiers perished in civil warfare — and re- 
united the Empire under his sole dominion. The young 
Empress of the defeated Magnentius retired into widow- 
hood, and will be restored to us in the next chapter. In 
the meantime Constantina has returned to the field, and 
her Imperial adventures call for our notice. 

Two children, the sons of Julius Constantius, had sur- 
vived the massacre at Constantinople. Gallus was in his 
twelfth year, Julian in his sixth. They were hidden until 
the fury of the soldiers had abated, and then their tender 
age induced the murderers to overlook them. The jealous 
eye of Constantius fell on them when they approached 
manhood, and they were confined in a fortress, or ancient 
palace, in Cappadocia. In the solitude of Macellum no 
company was offered them but that of slaves and soldiers. 
Julian, in whose mind the seeds of an elevated philosophy 
had taken root, resisted the pressing temptations, and 
devoted the long days to culture ; but Gallus, a sensual 
and ill-balanced youth, adopted the coarse distractions 
of his spacious jail. After six years (in 351) they were 
not only set at liberty, but Gallus was amazed to find 
himself clothed with the dignity of Caesar and married 
to the Emperor's sister Constantina. Constantius was 
compelled to leave the East in order to face Magnentius, 
and he needed a Caesar to rule in his name. 

The three years' rule of Gallus and Constantina was 



THE WIVES OF CONST ANTIUS AND JULIAN 291 

an Imperial scandal. Unscrupulous and unbridled, the 
daughter of Constantine lives in the literature of the time 
as a monstrous perversion of womanhood. With her 
begins the historical work (as we have it) of Ammianus 
Marcellinus, a retired general, one of the most scrupulous 
and ample chroniclers of his time. He bursts at once into 
a vivid denunciation of her vices. She was " a mortal 
Megsera," an ogre, swollen with pride and thirsting for 
human blood. It is unfortunate that Ammianus gives us 
no personal description of the women of his time. His 
work contains charming vignettes of the Emperors and 
princes, but he seems never to have looked on the face 
or figure of their wives. Gallus, he tells us, was a superb 
youth in figure and stature, his handsome features crowned 
with soft golden hair, and bearing a look of dignity and 
authority, in spite of his vices. The strain of cruelty and 
coarseness in him was provoked to excesses by his wife. 
When his savage conduct had exasperated his subjects 
he used to send his spies, in the disguise of beggars, to 
gather the secret whispers of discontent; and he even 
stooped to the practice of wandering himself, in disguise, 
from tavern to tavern on the well-lit streets of Antioch 
to discover his critics. Antioch had been noted for cen- 
turies for its freedom of speech, and the prisons and 
torture-chambers of Gallus were busy. 

Constantina not only encouraged this criminal conduct, 
but enlarged on it. A woman of vicious character came 
one day to disclose some plot, or pretended plot, to her. 
She rewarded her heavily, and sent the harlot out into the 
city in the royal chariot, to encourage others. An Alexan- 
drian noble distinguished himself by resisting the guilty 
passion of his mother-in-law. The woman presented 
Constantina with a pearl necklace, and the noble was put 
to death. We need not prolong the disgusting narrative. 
Flavia Julia Constantina, a beautiful and able woman, 
who can scarcely have passed her thirtieth year, was one 
of the worst Empresses in the Imperial gallery. One can 
but suggest, in some attenuation of her guilt, that the 



292 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

murder of her husband by her brother when she was a 
young girl in her early teens, and the fourteen years of 
young widowhood that followed, had provoked the worst 
elements of her nature. 

As long as Constantius was occupied with the struggle 
against Magnentius,he overlooked the excesses of his Caesar 
and his sister in the East. His opponent, Magnentius, was 
not so compliant, though he wasted no legions in an effort 
to dethrone him. He sent a soldier to assassinate Gallus 
and seduce the troops. As the man resided, however, in a 
tavern near Antioch, he became less cautious over his cups, 
and boasted to his associates of his mission. The old 
woman who kept the tavern seemed too far removed from 
politics to be taken into account, but she promptly de- 
nounced her guest at the palace, and he was put to death. 
Then Magnentius fell, and committed suicide, and Con- 
stantius turned to consider the scandalous conduct of his 
viceroy and his sister. 

Constantius proceeded, as he usually did whenever it 
was possible, by craft instead of force. The Prefect of the 
East had been slain by the people of Antioch, with the 
guilty connivance of Gallus, and a new Prefect, named 
Domitian, was sent to Antioch, together with the Prefect 
of the Palace, Montius. Domitian had orders to secure, 
by the most tactful and seductive means, that Gallus should 
visit Italy, and walk into the pit dug for him. He was, 
however, a sturdy officer, more sensible of the just sub- 
stance than the form of his instructions. Gallus and 
Constantina were at once insulted because, on the day of 
his arrival, he drove insolently past the gate of the palace, 
and went straight to his villa. They then condescended to 
invite him to the palace. In the presence of the hated 
rulers he laid aside all pretence of diplomacy, and roughly 
ordered the Caesar to proceed at once to Italy, or incur 
the just resentment of the Emperor. Gallus, stung by his 
insolence, at once gave the Prefect into the custody of the 
soldiers. Montius, who was present, and who also had 
lost all feeling for diplomacy in the passionate encounter, 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 293 

remonstrated with Gallus, adding the taunt that a man who 
had no power to dismiss one of his magistrates had no 
right to imprison a Prefect of the East. We are assured 
by Philostorgius that Constantina flew at the official, 
dragged him from the tribunal, and pushed him into the 
hands of the guard. We may prefer the more sober version 
of Ammianus. Gallus impetuously called upon the troops 
and the people of Antioch to defend their ruler, and they 
responded with surprising alacrity. The distinguished 
officers of Constantius were bound hand and foot, dragged 
through the streets until the last spark of life was extinct, 
and then flung into the river. 

Still Constantius hesitated to enter upon a civil war 
with the East, and the unscrupulous cunning which dictated 
his policy discovered an alternative procedure. First, the 
commander of the cavalry in the East was summoned to 
Milan, that the danger of a rising might be lessened. 
Then, a series of letters, couched in the most friendly and 
mendacious terms, were sent to the Csesar. Constantius 
was eager to see his beloved sister once more, and to confer 
with his Caesar. For some time they resisted the invitation, 
but at length Constantina, less apprehensive of personal 
injury, set out for Italy. She died on the journey, at 
Coenum in Bithynia, of fever, and her remains were buried 
at Rome. She was still in her early thirties at the time of 
her death. The single deed that is recorded in praise of 
her is that she and Gallus planted a Christian church in the 
dissolute grove of Daphne, and drew the austerity of the 
new faith upon that region of sensuous superstition and 
sensual license. Her share in that act of piety may be 
put in the scale against her avarice, cruelty, selfishness, and 
unbridled temper. 

The fate of her husband may be briefly recorded. Lured 
at length by the deceitful professions of Constantius, he 
set out for Milan with his princely retinue. As soon as 
he reached Europe, the retinue was brushed aside, and he 
discovered himself a captive. When the little party arrived 
in Pannonia, he was stripped of the purple, and conducted 



294 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

to the remote prison at Pola, where Crispus had been 
executed. There he was " tried " by a eunuch of Constan- 
tius's court, and within a few days a breathless courtier — 
he had ridden several horses to death — rushed into the 
presence of Constantius with the shoes of the slain Caesar. 
The Empire was reunited under Constantius, at a cost of 
the deaths of twenty princes and princesses of his house 
and their dependents, and fifty thousand soldiers ; and the 
eunuchs and courtiers filled the palace at Milan with the 
incense they offered to the young conqueror. 

Constantius had, meantime, married again, and a more 
worthy and commanding Empress engages our attention. 
Toward the close of his struggle with Magnentius, in the 
year 352 or the beginning of 353, the Emperor married a 
Macedonian lady, Aurelia Eusebia, of remarkable beauty, 
no little ability, and dignified personality. Her father and 
brothers had had consular rank in their province ; her 
mother had been distinguished for the propriety of her 
conduct and the careful rearing of her children after the 
death of her husband. The language in which the Emperor 
Julian describes her is enhanced by gratitude, and enjoys 
the license of a panegyric ; some would say that it is 
warmed by a more tender sentiment. But Ammianus, who 
also knew her, pronounces that the beauty of her character 
was not less splendid than that of her form, and, beyond a 
peevish complaint of a later writer that she did not confine 
herself to the proper and restricted sphere of a woman, she 
maintains her high repute among the conflicting writers of 
the time. The one grave imputation, which Ammianus 
seems to find quite consistent with his superlative praise 
of her, we will consider later. 

We find Eusebia established in the court at Milan at 
the time when the heads of the last of Constantius's 
rivals are falling. When Gallus has disappeared, he 
proudly takes the title of " Lord of the World," and 
endeavours to live up to it, amid his company of eunuchs 
and fawning attendants. In the hands of those astute and 
concordant schemers the weak and vain monarch was 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 295 

easily persuaded to arrive at decisions which he attributed 
to his own judgment, and it is, perhaps, the most indulgent 
plea that we can make for him that he was governed by 
a power so subtle and insinuating that he never perceived 
it. The high merit of a scrupulous chastity is claimed for 
him ; but the monastic writer Zonaras somewhat detracts 
from this by affirming that his coldness deprived him of 
a dynasty and forced his beautiful and accomplished wife 
into a fatal decline. His piety, at least, might be praised ; 
but it rested on a basis of Arian creed and is exposed 
to the scorn of the orthodox, who called him Antichrist. 

We may concur in the strictures of Zonaras so far as 
to admit that Eusebia cannot have been happy in his 
court. The eunuch Eusebius, who had tried and exe- 
cuted Gallus, was the most powerful man in the Empire. 
Ammianus observes, with heavy irony, that Constantius 
was believed to be not without influence with his emascu- 
lated chamberlain. A hierarchy of lesser, but hardly less 
corrupt, officials led up to this favoured minister, and 
Ammianus, from personal acquaintance with the court, 
assures us that their rapacity and unscrupulousness grew 
with the power of Constantius. A Persian officer, Mer- 
curius, had the nickname of " The Count of Dreams," from 
the skill with which he could make the most innocent 
fancies of the night bear a treasonable complexion, and 
bring destruction and spoliation on the dreamer. Paulus, 
who had risen from the lowly position of table-steward, 
was called " The Chain," because of the art with which 
he could involve a man in a charge of plotting. Torture 
and confiscation became common experiences once more, 
and men began to shrink from even the most innocent 
conversation. 

This unpleasant tenor of the Imperial life at Milan 
was relieved by the great controversy of the Arians and 
Athanasians, which was brought to Italy for decision. 
How Constantius and his officers induced the Latin 
bishops to condemn Athanasius, in 355, by "stroking their 
bellies instead of laying the rod on their backs," to use 



296 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the vigorous phrase of St. Hilary, does not concern us, 
but it is interesting to see how Eusebia came in contact 
with the prelates. When the Roman bishop, Liberius, 
bravely — for a time — incurred exile rather than condemn 
Athanasius, Eusebia sent him a sum of money. He 
returned it with the suggestion that her husband might 
find it useful for his troops or his Arian bishops. A new 
power, besides that of eunuchs, was rising. Suidas pre- 
serves a story that may be given here, though it may or 
may not refer to this Council. As the bishops, he says, 
came to the town where the court was, for the purpose 
of holding a Council, they called to salute the Empress. 
Leontius, Bishop of Tripoli, refused to visit her, and she 
sent word that, if he would call, she would give him the 
funds to build a large church. The saintly prelate replied 
that he would condescend to visit her if he were assured 
that she would receive him with fitting respect — if, he 
explained, she would rise from her throne at his entrance, 
bend for his benediction, and remain standing, while he 
sat, until he permitted her to resume her seat. 

In the same year (355), however, a more pleasant 
diversion alleviated the weariness of Eusebia, and another 
Empress is introduced to our notice. We have already 
said that the unhappy Gallus had for companion in his 
Cappadocian jail a young half-brother of the name of 
Julian. Imbibing his early culture at the alternate hands 
of Bishop Eusebius and the philosophical eunuch Mar- 
donius, Julian had come to prefer the Greek culture of the 
latter to the theological lore of the prelate. He had come 
out untainted from the lonely fortress at Macellumj and 
had passed to Constantinople and then to Nicomedia. 
There the distinguished pagan Libanius attracted his alle- 
giance, and from the three years in which he studied at 
Nicomedia his mind was wholly given to the older culture, 
however much he might be compelled to dissemble his 
aversion for the new religion. After the execution of 
Gallus he was brought to Milan. With growing apprehen- 
sion he awaited the decisiori of " the eunuch, chamberlain, 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 297 

and cook" who, he says, directed the bloody counsels of 
Constantius. But he found an unexpected and powerful 
friend in the Empress. 

It seems clear that Eusebia first espoused his cause in 
a pure feeling of humanity. The officials had impeached 
the innocent youth of twenty-three or twenty-four, chiefly 
on the ground of having visited Gallus, and his life was 
gravely threatened. Eusebia threw all her influence in 
the scale against the malignant officials, and, though they 
prevented Constantius from hearing him, she saved his 
life. He was housed in the suburbs of Milan, and was 
taken one day to see Eusebia. " I seemed to see, as in a 
temple, the image of the goddess of wisdom," he afterwards 
wrote in his " Letter to the Athenians." The splendid 
figure of the beautiful Empress can easily be imagined 
to have made a remarkable impression on the bookish 
youth. Eusebia was differently, but favourably, impressed. 
Julian was a well-made youth, of moderate stature and 
broad shoulders. He had the soft curly hair of his brother, 
a straight nose, large mouth, and brilliant eyes. The 
humane feeling of the Empress assumed a more tender and 
personal complexion, and she set to work to make Julian's 
fortune. 

He was sent for a time to Como, and, as her influence 
prevailed, recalled to Milan, and permitted to reply to his 
accusers before the Emperor. He was then permitted to 
retire to his mother's small estate in Bithynia, but Eusebia 
induced Constantius to impose on him the pleasant sentence 
of an exile to Athens. From the beloved schools of Athens 
he was, after a few months, recalled to Milan, to hear 
the astounding news that he was to receive the purple robe 
of Caesar and the hand of the Emperor's sister Helena. 
He shrank in tears from the political world that opened to 
him, but Eusebia tactfully overcame his opposition and 
guided his conduct. Her eunuchs ran continually between 
the palace and his lodging. The beard and cloak of the 
philosopher were laid aside, and Julian blushed to find 
himself accoutred in the splendid trappings of a com- 



298 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

mander. The jeers and intrigues of the court were at 
length silenced, and, on November 6th, 355, he stood on a 
lofty platform before the troops while Constantius invested 
him with the purple and exhorted him to sustain the 
honour of Rome. The marriage with Helena followed, 
and in December Julian and his bride, with a valuable 
collection of books as the gift of Eusebia, set out for 
Gaul. 

Julian never saw Eusebia again, and cannot have had 
the least correspondence with her. Even in Milan he 
had, on reflection, torn up a letter in which he modestly 
wished his patroness the reward of a succession of children. 
On his side there was nothing but a pure feeling of 
gratitude and reverence. She was, says Zosimus, " a woman 
of erudition and prudence above her sex " ; a shining 
example of spiritual and bodily beauty, according to 
Ammianus. She had most probably saved his life, and 
most certainly made his fortune. But it is believed by 
many writers that Eusebia's feeling for Julian was of a less 
ethereal nature. Gaetano Negri, whose life of Julian is 
one of the most distinguished biographies of a Roman 
Emperor, justly repudiates the suggestion of improper 
feeling on her part, and it is a superfluous inference. But 
one may, without casting the least reflection on her virtue, 
hesitate to think that the only link between them was 
a sympathy of culture. Such sympathy we may well 
assume between a cultivated Greek lady and an ardent 
Hellenist, but so cold and spiritual a relation may very 
naturally and pardonably have been strengthened by a 
warmer feeling. Julian had no sensuous attractiveness for 
a beautiful woman. But his manly person and character, 
his vast superiority to the crowd of ignoble parasites she 
daily encountered, and to her weak and mediocre husband, 
must have excited an admiration less purely intellectual 
than an appreciation of his learning. 

The person of Flavia Julia Helena remains faint and 
elusive in the ample chronicle of the time. She was much 
older than Julian, who was in his twenty-fifth year, while 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 299 

Helena cannot have been less than thirty.' She had not 
been previously married, Ammianus says, and the long 
maidenhood would not tend to make her attractive. The 
marriage was arranged by Eusebia in the political interest 
of Julian, and it probably retained the chill that a manage 
de convenance, with such disparity of age, would naturally 
bear. In Julian's abundant, and largely autobiographical, 
writings she is barely mentioned. It was the marriage of 
an old maid — for the Roman world — with an austere, 
if conscientious, philosopher. The gradual discovery of 
Julian's secret loyalty to the old gods would not make 
their relations more cordial. 

We may, therefore, regret that the single line of inquiry 
which we pursue will compel us to leave almost unnoticed 
the brilliant episode of the reign of Julian. The more 
liberal taste of our time has removed the violent and 
conflicting colours which the partisan writers of the fourth 
century laid upon the portrait of Julian, To Gregory 
of Nazianzum he was a faint impersonation of Antichrist ; 
to the pagan writers a modest incorporation of Apollo. 
In modern history he is a most conscientious thinker, 
a humane and unselfish ruler, a very capable commander, 
a conceited and unattractive personality. His character, 
in spite of the shade that clings to it as a trace of the 
enforced dissimulation of his early years, is great : his 
ability and achievements are just entitled to be called 
brilliant. 

Helena and Eusebia appear little in the years that 
follow, and we must narrate the necessary events very 
briefly. The frame of mind in which Constantius sent 
Julian to Gaul as Caesar is not at all clear. The frontier 
was obliterated ; the barbarians overrunning the country 
in formidable strength ; the military force inadequate, ex- 
cept with fine control. Some writers are disposed to 

* Miss Gardner observes, in her life of Julian, that we do not know if 
Helena was older than Julian. But, while Julian is known to have been 
born in 331 or 332, since he was in his sixth year at the time of the massacre 
of 337t and died at thirty-two, Helena's mother had been murdered in 326, 



300 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

think that Constantius was sending his cousin to death. 
At all events, the faith of Eusebia, that her young and 
shrinking scholar would surmount these difficulties, was 
great ; and it was rewarded. Julian at once discovered a 
bravery that none had suspected. He cut his way through 
a region occupied by the barbarians, surveyed the devastated 
frontier, and passed the first year of his inexperience with 
only one small disaster. The difficulty of his task seemed 
greater when, in the winter, he was besieged in Sens, and 
the commander of the troops in the neighbourhood refused 
to go to his relief. In the trouble that followed Eusebia 
obtained for him the full command of the troops, which had 
been withheld from him, and from that moment he entered 
on a career of victory. 

It is probable that Helena did not share his peril in 
this winter (356-7). We find her at Rome in April, with 
Eusebia and Constantius, and a curious story of their 
relations is put before us. Constantius in that month 
bestowed his first and only visit upon the ancient capital 
of the Empire. Sitting in a chariot that glittered with 
gold and gems, preceded by officers whose spears bore 
silken dragons, so fashioned as to hiss in the breeze, on 
their golden and bejewelled tips, followed by his legions in 
battle-array, their breastplates and shields gleaming in the 
sun, the Emperor passed with affected indifference between 
the dense lines of spectators and the great monuments of 
Rome ; though both the vast crowds and the ancient struc- 
tures, shining with a beauty that his decaying Empire 
could no longer produce, wrung from him in private an 
expression of astonishment. Eusebia had invited Helena 
to join them in this visit to Rome. 

At a later point in his narrative Ammianus makes a 
reference to this visit that has perplexed every thoughtful 
reader. When he comes to record the death of Helena, he 
says that it was due to a poisonous drug administered to 
her by Eusebia, during the visit to Rome, to prevent her 
from having children, and that in the previous year, when 
she was pregnant, Eusebia sent a midwife to destroy the 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 301 

child under pretence of attending her. It does not seem 
to occur to Gibbon and other historians, who adopt this 
story, that it suggests in Eusebia a character in complete 
contradiction to that ascribed to her by Ammianus himself 
and every other Roman writer. A jealousy of Helena, 
whether on account of her own childlessness or on account 
of Julian, that could force her to such a malignant course, 
is utterly inconsistent with the description we have quoted 
of her. The story is peremptorily rejected by Miss Gardner 
and Signor Negri, and its discord with all that we know of 
Eusebia is noticed by most writers. 

One is tempted to inquire if it may not be an interpola- 
tion, but the text of Ammianus lends no support whatever 
to the idea. We can only suppose that Ammianus incor- 
porated a piece of idle gossip, and was inattentive to its 
inconsistency with his high moral praise of Eusebia. Many 
legends, we shall see, sprang up after the death of Helena. 
Some of them assail Julian, and are easily traced to 
their source. It is possible that the courtiers who op- 
posed Eusebia, and doubtless misrepresented her zeal 
for Julian, started the rumour, and Ammianus heard it in 
Italy years afterwards. It is a mere feather in the scale 
against the authorities for the high character of the 
Empress. 

From Rome Constantius was summoned to repel fresh 
invasions in the East, and Helena returned to Gaul. She 
remains unnoticed until the spring of the year 360, and we 
will not follow Julian through the brilliant campaigns in 
which he reduced the most powerful tribes of the bar- 
barians, and restored peace and prosperity to his stricken 
province. But while Julian succeeded in the West, the 
campaign of the "troops of Constantius in the East won 
for the Emperor few laurels, and entailed grave disasters. 
The intriguers now doubled their charges against Julian, 
and plausibly suggested that he would be prompted to 
claim a higher title than that of Caesar. It was decided 
to reduce his power by removing a number of his finest 
legions to the East. 



302 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Julian was in winter quarters at Paris — as Lutetia was 
beginning to be called — when the grave summons reached 
him. The island on the Seine, which now bears the 
Cathedral, had from early times offered a secure settlement, 
and, as the province became more settled, the adjoining 
slope, where the Latin Quarter of a later age began, was 
occupied with a palace, an amphitheatre, and a few of the 
customary institutions of a Roman town. Julian loved the 
little settlement on the broad silvery river, surrounded by 
dense forests, and he was spending the winter there, attend- 
ing with equal judgment and humanity to the civil welfare 
of his province, when the officers of Constantius arrived. 
He has described at length the painful perplexity into which 
he was thrown. Not only would the sacrifice of four of 
his best legions seriously impair his strength, but they were 
local troops and had enlisted only for local service. He 
decided to obey, and ordered the troops to prepare for 
departure. An angry murmur arose from the camps, as 
the men reflected on the fate that might befall their families 
in the ill-protected country. Julian provided that their 
wives and children should accompany them, and they 
gathered at Paris for the dismissal. In affecting language 
the Caesar conveyed to them his thanks and his admoni- 
tions, entertained their officers at a banquet, and retired 
to his palace. 

The sincerity of Julian has been made the theme of 
an acrid discussion between his violent critics and his 
resolute admirers. But we may, without serious reflection 
on his character, doubt whether he entirely wished the 
troops to go. Such an order, from such a source, would 
plausibly relieve a Caesar from obedience. Only excessive 
virtue or uncertain prospect of the issue would counsel 
a man to obey it. Both feelings were at work in Julian's 
mind, and there is not ground to accuse his later account 
of hypocrisy. But we may surmise that, at the time, his 
decision was accompanied by unsanctioned hopes and 
dreams of a more satisfactory issue. In those days of 
anxious deliberation his imagination, however he might 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 303 

curb it, must have depicted for him the revival of cul- 
ture, the arrest of superstition, the purification of the 
court and Empire, that would follow his elevation to the 
throne. 

He retired to his palace, where, as he incidentally 
observes somewhere, Helena lived with him. But shortly 
after midnight a great tumult arose from the direction 
of the camp, and from the windows one could see the 
troops, the light of their torches gleaming on their drawn 
swords, coming toward the palace. The doors were at 
once closed, and Julian refused to show himself, but the 
cry of " Imperator " easily penetrated to his ears. On 
the following morning they broke into the palace, and 
forcibly conducted Julian to the camp. He resisted, 
threatened, and supplicated, but the troops were con- 
sulting their own interest, now gravely threatened by 
their revolt, and there was no other course possible but 
to consent. He was raised up on a shield, and the legions 
broke into a frenzy of delight at their escape from exile. 
A diadem only was needed to complete his new dignity, 
and Helena, who was present, seems to have offered a 
pearl necklace of hers. Julian refused to wear the feminine 
adornment, and an officer provided a rich golden collar, 
studded with gems, for the coronation. 

With the struggle that followed, and the dramatic 
chapter that opened in the annals of Rome, we have no 
concern. Both our Empresses die before a decisive stage 
is reached. The date of the death of Eusebia is not 
known. It was some time between the beginning of 359 
and the middle of 360, as Constantius married again 
toward the end of 360. She is said to have died of an 
inflammation of the womb, brought on by taking drugs 
for procuring fertility. That such drugs were familiar at 
the time, and that the Empress would naturally try their 
effect, we readily admit, but we need not entirely over- 
look the statement of Zonaras that the conduct of her 
husband and the unhappiness of her circumstances brought 
the beautiful Greek into a decline. Had she shared the 



304 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

throne with Julian, and adopted his views, the story of 
Europe might have run differently.^ 

That Helena was won to the views of Julian is 
improbable. She would, no doubt, discover soon after 
her marriage that he secretly cherished the cult of the 
old gods. From his first month in Gaul he had, with 
one assistant, set up a private shrine to them. There 
are coins that bear the names of Julian and Helena and 
the figures of Isis and Serapis, but they yield no inference. 
Nor can we learn the attitude of Helena in the struggle 
between her husband and her brother. The complete 
silence of Julian suggests that she remained moodily 
silent or hostile. Several months were spent in negotia- 
tion with Constantius. In December Julian celebrated, 
at Vienne, the fifth anniversary of his promotion, and wore 
the splendid diadem of an Emperor as he presided at the 
games and exercises. In the midst of the festivities Helena 
died. Zonaras, who also gives a ridiculous rumour that 
she had been divorced by Julian, says that she died in 
childbirth. We are tempted to think that the painful 
development of her unprosperous marriage weighed 
heavily on her, and her pregnancy had a premature and 
fatal delivery. Her remains were conveyed to Rome, and 
laid by those of her sister Constantina, We need not 
notice the charge of one of Constantius's officers that 
Julian had poisoned her, and paid the guilty physician 
with his mother's jewels. Julian, honestly, professes no 
grief at her death, and he never married again. 

A third Empress makes a brief appearance at the 
time when Helena passes away. Passing from his long 
campaign on the Danube to the stricken regions of the 
East, Constantius had, toward the close of 360, married for 
the third time, at Antioch. Maxima Faustina, his third 
Empress, had little time to make an impression on history, 
if she were capable of it. As Constantius at length set 

' Philostorgius says that, as she lay ill with her malady, Constantius 
recalled Bishop Theophilus from exile, and he cured her. But Zonaras 
makes her die of this very malady, scouting the Arian miracle. 



THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 305 

out from Antioch, in the autumn of 361, to crush the 
mutiny in the West, as he affected to regard it, he con- 
tracted a fever, and died before he reached the European 
frontier. Faustina was left with the unborn wife of 
the future Emperor Gratian, and will come to our notice 
again. The Roman Empire was once more united under 
a strong, upright, and accomplished ruler. But Julian 
was now wedded to his ideals, and, as no woman shared 
his ascetic life and arduous labours, we must pass over 
the reforms, the campaigns, and the religious struggles 
of the next two years. 



20 



CHAPTER XIX 

JUSTINA 

THE splendour of Julian's reign was soon overcast. 
In the summer of 363, as he was skilfully extricating 
his troops from a dangerous position in Persia, he 
was pierced with a javelin, and he expired, with dignity 
and serenity, amongst his saddened supporters. Amid 
the noisy intrigue for the succession that followed, the 
name of Jovian, a popular and handsome officer of no 
distinction, obtained the loudest support, and the mantle 
of the brilliant young Emperor was conferred on him. 
How he secured the retreat of his troops by humiliating 
concessions to the Persians, and the Roman soldiers and 
Roman settlers sadly evacuated the provinces on which 
the blood of their fathers had been freely spent, and the 
emblem of the cross was borne again at the head of the 
legions, need not be told here. Not only is the wife of 
Jovian, Charito, no more than a name to us, but Jovian 
himself died before he reached the luxury of the capital. 
His brief enjoyment of power had been adorned by neither 
courage nor temperance. Charito sank back into obscurity, 
with her infant son, and was years afterwards laid by the 
side of her husband in the Church of the Apostles at 
Byzantium. 

The next reign will introduce us to the stronger and 
more prominent personality of the Empress Justina and 
other Empresses of some interest. The hum of intrigue 
had arisen again in the camp, and the struggle of Christian 
and pagan was resumed. The choice of the army at length 

306 



JUSTINA 307 

fell once more on an officer whose chief distinction was 
that he had a large and handsome person, and had had 
an energetic father. Valentinian had been an officer in 
Julian's guards, and had one day, as he attended the 
Emperor at sacrifice, cuffed the priest for dropping some 
of the lustral water on his coat. Julian banished him 
for this violent desecration of his cult, but, though the 
more lively writers of the time promptly dispatch him 
to remote and contradictory regions, even Tillemont doubts 
if the sentence was carried out. It is probable that Julian 
had merely dismissed him from the body-guard, as we 
find him in the army at the time of Juhan's death. With 
two other officers he was sent by Jovian to secure the 
allegiance of the troops in the West. One legion, devoted 
to the memory of Julian, rebelled, and Valentinian had 
to fly for his life. He returned to the East, and resumed 
his post in the army, as it trailed some miles in the rear 
of the retreating Emperor. And in the middle of February 
(364) he was amazed to learn that Jovian had died, after 
a too liberal supper, and he himself was called to the 
throne. He was compelled by the troops to share the 
power with his brother Valens, and, leaving the shorn 
Eastern provinces under the care of Valens, he went on to 
Milan to take possession of the Western throne. 

Valeria Severa,^ the first wife of Valentinian, is one 
of those shadowy Empresses whose form can hardly be 
discerned in the records of the time. She had borne 
him a son, the future Emperor Gratian, five years before, 
but she does not seem to have secured his affection, and 
we shall find her retiring in disgrace as soon as the 
beautiful Justina appears at court. Albia Dominica, the 
wife of Valens, is not more interesting, but an Empress 
whom we have dismissed in a former chapter at once 
reappears at Constantinople in opposition to her. 

Before they separated Valens and Valentinian had fallen 

^ The Alexandrian Chronicle repeatedly calls her Marina, and we have no 
coins to determine the full and accurate name. Cohen, at least, gives no 
coins, though Tilleraont refers to them. 



308 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

ill together, and, under the pretence that Julian's friends 
had attempted to poison them, they turned with some 
vindictiveness upon the pagan officials. The aged and 
respected Sallust firmly controlled the inquiry, and no 
blood was shed ; but large numbers of Julian's officials 
were displaced — in many cases quite rightly, as Julian's 
zeal for paganism had had the same evil effect in en- 
couraging hypocrisy as the zeal of other Emperors for 
Christianity — and driven into sullen discontent. Further, 
Dominica's father, Petronius, a deformed and repulsive 
person, had risen to power with his daughter, and was 
grinding the faces of the citizens of the East with the 
most extortionate demands. A spark soon fell on this 
inflammable world. Procopius, a relative of Julian's, had 
published a very hazy claim to the Empire after Julian's 
death. He had hastily withdrawn and disowned it, but 
Valens sent men to apprehend him. Ingeniously escaping 
the soldiers, he fled to Constantinople, and seems there to 
have fallen into the hands of abler intriguers. Two legions 
were bought for him, and they made him Emperor. There 
was no purple mantle to be obtained, so they clothed him 
in a stagy tunic bespangled with gold, put purple shoes 
on his feet and a piece of purple cloth in his hand, and 
conducted him, amid the amazed and derisive spectators, 
to the Senate and the Palace. 

His force grew so quickly that the weak and nervous 
Emperor of the East was disposed to yield him the throne, 
but his older officers urged him to resist. In the short 
struggle that followed we meet again the third wife, and 
widow, of Constantius. Faustina had been enceinte at the, 
death of her husband, and she was living at Constantinople, 
with her four-year-old daughter, when Procopius made 
his romantic attempt on the throne. With some shrewd- 
ness he withdrew her from her retirement, and associated 
her with him in his claim. The legitimate dynasty seemed 
to be wresting the throne from usurpers when the widow 
and daughter of the son of Constantine appeared at the 
head of the troops. Even when they marched out to 



JUSTINA 309 

meet the forces of Valens, Faustina, in a litter, accompanied 
them. But the new hope of Faustina died away as quickly 
as it had been born. The soldiers were persuaded to 
return to their allegiance, and the power of Procopius 
swiftly melted away. Faustina sank again into obscurity, 
and the adventurous career of Constantia was postponed 
for some years. 

Dominica returned to her position in the enervated 
and luxurious court, and the rest of her life offers little 
interest. The ecclesiastical historians describe her as 
egging her husband to persecute the Trinitarians, but 
we must read the charge with discretion. There is little 
positive trace of persecution. One day eighty Trinitarian 
priests came to plead their cause at the court, and Valens 
is said to have ordered them back to their ship. At some 
distance from port the vessel was found to be aflame, 
and the priests were burnt to death. The orthodox writers 
declare that the vessel was purposely fired, at the command 
of Valens, but it is impossible to adjust the conflicting 
statements of the rival schools of theology. Valens was 
an ardent Arian, but he upheld the principle of religious 
toleration, and confined theologians to the use of theological 
weapons. The only occasion on which he is known to 
have ordered or countenanced violent persecution was 
in the suppression of magic. In some obscure chamber 
of the capital a group of men resorted to this dark means 
of discovering who would be the successor of Valens. 
Some say that a ring dangling from a mystic tripod 
spelt out the name on painted letters; some that grains 
of corn were placed on letters of the alphabet, and, when 
a cock was admitted to peck them, the order of the letters 
which it first attacked was noticed. In either case, the 
result was to give the letters Th E O D. It would be 
a remarkable forecast, if the story did not belong to a 
generation after the accession of Theodosius. However, 
the attempt became known, and a searching inquiry and 
savage persecution followed. The despicable trade of the 
informer was encouraged, whole libraries of valuable books 



3IO THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

were destroyed, and numbers of innocent philosophers 
and matrons were included in the bloody lists of the 
condemned. 

The name of Dominica occurs only in one authentic 
connexion during the reign of Valens. The Emperor 
passed the winter of 372-3 at Caesarea in Cappadocia, 
where he encountered the stern and uncompromising 
champion of orthodoxy, St. Basil. Strong no less in his 
personal haughtiness — St. Jerome calls it pride — than in 
his glowing zeal for his Church, Basil emphatically refused 
to obey him, and was threatened with banishment. At 
once Dominica and her boy fell ill. Besides two daughters, 
she had had a son in 366, and this boy fell into a dangerous 
illness. It is said that Dominica learned in a dream that 
the illness was a divine punishment, but it is not impossible 
that her waking intelligence could arrive at that con- 
clusion. Basil was summoned to the palace once more. 
Theodoret would have it that the bishop courteously 
breathed on the boy, and declared that he would re- 
cover if he received Trinitarian baptism. The earlier 
ecclesiastical writers, however, ascribe to him a firmer 
attitude. He asked Valens if the boy would receive 
orthodox baptism, and was told that he would not. " Let 
him meet whatever fate God wills then," said the bishop, 
quitting the palace. The boy was baptized by the Arians, 
and died during the following night. A power even 
greater than that of eunuchs, and more imperious than that 
of Emperors, was rapidly growing. When, some days 
later, one of the favourites of Valens, who had risen from 
the kitchen, attempted to intervene in a discussion between 
the bishop and the Emperor, Basil curtly told him to con- 
fine himself to sauces and not interfere in Church matters. 

Five or six years later Valens perished in the war 
with the Goths, and Dominica passed to the fitting obscurity 
of private life. The one indication of spirit that is recorded 
of her is that, when the victorious Goths pressed on to 
Constantinople and invested it, she paid the citizens out of 
the public treasury to arm themselves against the barbar- 



JUSTINA 31 1 

ians. We turn from her vague and retiring personality 
to the more interesting figure of Justina, who had some 
years before begun to share the throne of Valentinian. 

Valentinian was as fierce and choleric as his brother 
was timid. A tall and powerful man, with stern blue 
eyes, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, he enlisted 
and encouraged his native cruelty in the service of what 
he regarded as the interest of the State. The pagans he 
refused to persecute, and he did much to promote the 
higher culture of Rome, which was so closely connected 
with the pagan beliefs. But, like his brother, he fell with 
truculence upon all who could be brought under a com- 
prehensive charge of magic and divination, and the blood 
of Italy flowed very freely. His hard, covetous, and 
brutal officers enriched themselves in the work of torture, 
spoliation, and execution, and — though the statement re- 
calls rather the savagery of Nero or Domitian — we are 
assured by the contemporary Ammianus that he kept two 
monstrous bears in cages near his chamber, and fed them 
on human victims. The slightest offence might incur 
sentence of death. "You had better change his head," 
he is said to have ordered, in brutal playfulness, when 
some official desired to change to another province. 

It is, perhaps, a circumstance of credit to Severa that 
she failed to retain the affection of Valentinian, though a 
less flattering reason is assigned by some of the authorities. 
The truth is that, since Valentinian is described as most 
chaste and most Christian, the accession of Justina to his 
palace has caused the ecclesiastical historians no little 
perplexity. The Church was peremptorily opposed to 
divorce, and regarded as adultery a second marriage 
contracted while the first wife lived. Baronius con- 
veniently removes Severa by death, but Ammianus 
informs us that Severa was living long afterwards at the 
court of her son,^ and the Alexandrian Chronicle expressly 

' Lib. xxviii. 1 : He says that Gratian put a certain man to death " on 
the advice of his mother." Zonaras says that Severa still lived at the time 
of the second marriage, 



312 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

says that Gratian recalled his mother to court. Tillemont 
acknowledges this, and can only blush for the guilty 
connivance of the clergy of the period. 

If we could believe the ecclesiastical historian Socrates, 
Valentinian avoided the sin of divorce and adultery by 
promulgating a decree to the effect that it was lawful to 
have two wives, and promptly marrying Justina in addition 
to Severa. Of such a law, however, we have no trace, 
and most writers follow the alternative theory of the 
authorities. 

Aviana Justina was the widow of the usurper Mag- 
nentius, who had so dramatically stolen the throne of 
the worthless Constans, and had been crushed by Con- 
stantius in the year 353. She was a woman of great 
beauty, the daughter of a high provincial official, a spirited 
and ambitious young woman. She would be in her later 
twenties, at least, in 368, when she entered the suite of 
Severa in some capacity. She was soon associated so 
intimately with the Empress that they bathed together, and 
Severa made the fatal mistake of describing what Socrates 
curiously calls her "virginal beauty" to the sensual 
Valentinian. Before long it was announced that Severa 
was divorced, and Justina occupied her bed. A late 
authority throws a thin mantle over the action of 
Valentinian. Severa, he says, used her Imperial position 
to compel a lady of Milan to sell her an estate at a most 
inadequate price, and Valentinian was unable to endure 
her avarice. The vague description we have of Justina's 
dazzling beauty will, perhaps, suffice. 

This remarkable conduct on the part of Valentinian 
and Justina is put in the year 368.^ The succeeding 
years of war and religious controversy throw no light on 
the character of Justina, and we need not describe them. 

' Gratian, the youthful son of Severa, had been clothed with the purple by 
Valentinian, " at the instigation of his wife and father-in-law," says the 
epitomist of Aurelius Victor, in the autumn of 367. On the other hand, 
Justina's brother was killed, in the service of Valentinian, in 369. The second 
marriage falls most naturally in 368. 



JUSTIN A 313 

Valentinian died in 375. Some delegates of the barbarians 
had come, with deep humility, to implore his clemency for 
their invasion of his dominions, and Valentinian burst into 
one of his appalling storms of rage. So violent was his 
fury in addressing them that he burst a blood-vessel, and 
left the Western Empire to his son Gratian. Gratian had 
married in the previous year. His Empress was the 
daughter of Faustina, who had been borne in her mother's 
arms at the head of the troops of Procopius. In cross- 
ing the provinces to meet Gratian, Constantia had had a 
singular adventure. While she was dining at an inn, some 
twenty-six miles from Sirmium, the tribes broke across the 
Danube and occupied the village. There was just time for 
the Governor of Illyrium to snatch up the thirteen-year-old 
princess and make a dash for Sirmium. She married 
Gratian in 374, and became Empress of the West in the 
following year. But Flavia Maxima Constantia has left 
only the faint impress of her early adventures on the 
chronicles of the time, and the few years of her Imperial 
life have no interest for us. The next mention of her is 
that she died some time before her husband, who was 
assassinated in 383. He had married again, but his widow, 
Laeta, is a mere name in history. Theodosius gave a 
comfortable income to Lseta and her mother Pissamena, 
and they were distinguished for their charity in the later 
misfortunes of Rome. 

When Valentinian had died in a fit of rage at Bregetio, 
Justina and her four-year-old boy, Valentinian the younger, 
were in the town of Murocincta, a hundred miles away. 
Justina hastened to the camp, and it was presently an- 
nounced that the army had decided to associate the boy 
with Gratian in the rule of the West. Gratian, the most 
temperate and promising of the Emperors of the period, 
published his consent. A refusal to acknowledge the boy, 
and an attempt to punish the intrigue by which Justina 
retained her power, would have involved a civil war, 
and the whole of his forces were now needed to stem the 
flood of barbarism that surged against the northern frontier 



314 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

of the Empire, The last days of Rome were fast approach- 
ing. From the remote deserts of Asia a fierce and 
numerous people, the Huns, had entered Europe, and were 
sweeping the Goths and other Teutonic tribes southward. 
Gratian appointed an Emperor of the East, whom we 
shall meet presently, in the place of Valens, and spent 
his strength in heroic efforts to defend the threatened 
frontier. 

Justina returned with the boy-Emperor to Milan. As 
long as Gratian lived, Justina was restricted to the life 
of the palace, but in 383 the throne was usurped by 
Maximus, and Gratian was murdered by one of his 
emissaries. Gibbon generously traces the general dis- 
satisfaction out of which this revolt emerged to a 
deterioration of the character of Gratian. This deteriora- 
tion cannot be questioned, but one particular outcome of 
it, the active persecution of the pagans, was probably 
his most fatal error. Milan was now dominated by the 
imperious and zealous St. Ambrose, and the two young 
Emperors were expressly under his control. At the 
suggestion of Ambrose, Gratian abandoned Valentinian's 
policy of toleration. He rejected the title of Pontifex 
Maximus, ordered the removal of the statue of Victory 
from the Roman Senate, and confiscated the estates of 
the temples. He even admitted the abusive epithet 
" pagans " (or " villagers "), which the more forward 
Christians were beginning to use, in his official decrees.^ 
This must have inflamed the general discontent, and the 
army of Maximus marched peacefully over Gaul, and 
occupied the Empire as far as the Alps. The Emperor 
of the East, Theodosius, consented that Britain, Gaul, 
and Spain should remain under the rule of Maximus, 
and Justina continued to rule the curtailed dominions of 
her son. 

It was now discovered that Justina was an Arian. 

• Yet St. Augustine, who was in Rome the year after the death of Gratian, 
says in his "Confessions" (viii. 2) that "nearly the whole nobiUty of 
Rome " still clung to the old religion. 



JUSTINA 31 5 

Whether she had concealed her beHefs during the life 
of Valentinian, or had been recently won to the sect, it 
is impossible to say ; but Ambrose now found that he 
had a stubborn opponent of his religious ambition. The 
trouble culminated in 385, when scenes were witnessed 
that effectively impress on us the change that had come 
over the Roman Empire. Justina ordered that one of 
the Christian churches of the city should be put at the 
disposal of the Arian clergy. Ambrose sternly refused, 
and, when he was summoned to the palace, and a sentence 
of banishment was apprehended, the people flocked to 
the palace and intimidated the Empress and her coun- 
sellors. A little later, the Gothic (Arian) soldiers were 
sent to occupy the church, and orders were given that it 
should be prepared for the Empress's devotions. A renewal 
of the riot, and the showering of the vilest epithets upon 
the person of the Empress, forced her to retire once more. 
In the following year, 386, she passed sentence of exile 
on the bishop, and her spirit was expended in a final 
struggle. For the first time in the history of Rome — a 
true index of its profound demoralization — the troops were 
prevented by the people from carrying out an Imperial 
decree. Ambrose was guarded day and night by thousands 
of his followers. The chief church and the episcopal house 
were fortified as if for a siege, and the troops of " Jezebel " 
had to stand inactive before a mob of citizens. On the 
advice of Theodosius, Justina refrained from any further 
attempt. Indeed, her attention was soon violently with- 
drawn to a very different danger. 

The ambition of Maximus had once more outrun its 
bounds, and he coveted the remaining provinces of Valen- 
tinian. Justina's conduct betrays that her ability was 
inferior to her spirit. Duped by the treacherous diplomacy 
of Maximus, she was suddenly informed that the hostile 
forces of Maximus were close to Milan, and she fled hastily 
to the coast. At Aquileia she and her son took ship for 
the East, The soldiers of Maximus followed them on swift 
galleys, but they rounded the south of Greece in safety, 



3i6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

and landed at Thessalonica. Her task now was to induce 
Theodosius to espouse their cause, and it proved to be one 
of nearer proportion to her talent. 

Her pressing appeals to Theodosius for aid were parried 
or unheeded for some time. If we may believe Theodoret, 
the only reply which she received was a painful assurance 
that the heresy she entertained, and in which she was 
educating her son, was a sufficient cause of all the evils 
that had come upon them. She was directed to await a 
visit from Theodosius at Thessalonica, and the visit was 
much delayed. Historians usually depict the Emperor as 
held in suspense by a painful dilemma. Not only would 
it be a serious thing for the Empire, surrounded as it was 
with peril, to engage the forces of the East and the West in 
an exhausting civil war, but Theodosius would, in such a 
war, be attacking an orthodox Catholic in the interest of 
a fanatical Arian and enemy of the Church; and Theodosius 
was a most zealous Trinitarian, The difficulty must have 
occurred to him, and it would not be fantastical to assume 
that there had been some correspondence between the 
prelates of the East and the prelates of the West, to ensure 
that the point did not escape him. 

The pagan Zosimus has a different theory of the delay 
of Theodosius. The character of that Emperor was, he 
says, a singular union of contradictions. He could blaze 
with the fury of a Valentinian, or bend his head meekly for 
the blessing of a bishop ; he could lead the troops through 
a campaign with the most signal dexterity, energy, and 
success, and then relax into the most ignoble indolence; 
he could embrace the rigour of a soldier's life without 
the least effort to soften it, and then resign himself to the 
most voluptuous day-dreams in his Imperial palace. Justina, 
Zosimus says, was so unfortunate as to need his aid during 
one of his periods of luxury and " insane pursuit of 
pleasure." He resented the effort to awaken him from it. 
His deep indebtedness to Gratian, however, who had con- 
ferred the Empire on him, at length forced him to cross 
the Greek sea, and visit Justina at Thessalonica. From the 




AELIA FLACCILLA 




HONORIA 

ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM: 



JUSTINA J17 

time of that visit his pulse was quickened, and he began 
a vigorous preparation for war with Maximus. Justina 
had with her at Thessalonica, not only the insipid boy 
Valentinian, but a pretty young daughter, Galla, and 
Theodosius had fallen in love with her, Justina promptly 
perceived, and artfully used, her opportunity, and it was 
arranged that the pretty princess should be his reward 
for restoring the Western Empire to Valentinian and his 
mother. 

Theodosius, who is incomparably the leading ruler of 
the fourth century, had come from the same part of Spain 
as Trajan, to whom some of the writers of the time 
compare him — with no little flattery. His father. Count 
Theodosius, had been an able commander and a just 
administrator, but had been unjustly disgraced and executed 
owing to some obscure jealousy. Later writers, thinking 
of the magical Th E O D of Antioch, believed that his 
name led to his undoing. The younger Theodosius, a 
cultivated and skilful officer, retired to his estates in Spain, 
from which he was drawn by Gratian, and presently 
clothed with the purple. He had, in 376 or 377, married a 
Spanish lady, JElia. Flaccilla, who is believed, on slender 
grounds, to have been the daughter of the consul Antonius. 
Their son Arcadius, the future Emperor, was born during 
the retirement in Spain, A daughter, Pulcheria, was born 
in Spain while Theodosius was on campaign. Then 
Flaccilla found herself transferred from the quiet Spanish 
estate to the pomp of Constantinople, and the second son, 
Honorius, was born in the purple. 

Although Flaccilla is canonized in the Greek Church, 
it does not appear that she had a marked individuality. 
She is one of the crowd of fourth-century Empresses who 
live in the chronicles only as generous benefactors of the 
Church, Theodosius was the first Emperor to persecute 
his pagan subjects on the ground of religion, and his 
successive decrees quickly changed the religious aspect of 
the East, His modern biographers, Ifland and Gulden- 
penning (" Der Kaiser Theodosius "), lay much of the blame 



3i8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

for these violent measures on Flaccilla, but they point out 
that the coercive legislation begins just after Theodosius 
came under the influence of Bishop Acholius during a 
severe illness, and that his efforts to crush paganism by 
violence relaxed with his advance in age and experience. 
All that we learn of Flaccilla is that she was generous to 
the Church and the poor, and that she occasionally curbed 
the fiery and vindictive temper of Theodosius. She seems 
to have died in the year 385, and the Greek ritual celebrates 
her memory on September 14th. 

Theodosius was, therefore, a middle-aged widower — his 
biographers put his birth in 346— when, in the autumn of 
387, Justina presented her daughter Galla to him. Dr. 
Ifland admits that the young girl probably turned the 
hesitating scale of his judgment. He returned to Con- 
stantinople, and made energetic preparations for war. A 
two months' campaign in the following summer (388) 
completely destroyed the forces of Maximus, and the full 
Empire of the West was restored to Valentinian. But 
Justina had little personal profit by the victory. Zosimus 
tells us that she ** supplied the deficiencies of her son as 
well as a woman can " after the return to Milan, while 
Sozomen declared that she died before the return. The 
point is obscure, but the evidence suggests, on the whole, 
that she returned to Milan. It was, however, to a different 
Milan from that she had quitted. Theodosius accompanied 
them, and the strong, earnest character of Ambrose made 
a deep impression on him. Valentinian was " converted " 
to the true creed, and the policy of persecution was intro- 
duced into the Western world. Justina must have remained 
a powerless and embittered spectator of the ascendancy of 
Ambrose. So great did it become that the coldest decisions 
of the Emperor were reversed by him, and his trans- 
gressions were ignominiously punished. The news came 
to Milan that the monks and populace of a small town in 
Persia had burned the synagogue of the Jews, and that the 
prefect had ordered them to rebuild the synagogue and 
restore its property. Theodosius confirmed the just 



JUSTINA 319 

sentence, but Ambrose assailed him so strongly, in letter 
and sermon, that he was obliged to give complete im- 
munity to the offenders ; and the wave of violence — the 
burning of temples and synagogues, and the despoiling 
and slaying of unbelievers and heretics of all shades — 
continued to roll destructively over the East. The more 
impressive incident of Theodosius, the greatest ruler of 
his time, standing in the humble attitude of a penitent 
in the church at Milan is well known. The people of 
Thessalonica, stung by the heavy taxation which the ex- 
travagant rule of Theodosius imposed on the East, and the 
quartering of barbaric troops on them, took some occasion 
to riot, and slew the representatives of the Emperor. In 
a fit of passion Theodosius turned his troops upon the 
defenceless people, whom he had treacherously invited to 
the Circus, and a horrible and unexampled massacre was 
perpetrated. Ambrose nobly insisted that the Emperor 
must expiate his crime like the humblest member of his 
flock. The world was entering upon a new era. 

How much of these proceedings Justina lived to see it 
is impossible to determine. She died some time between 
388 and 391 ; the obscurity of her death is a sufficient proof 
of her powerlessness in her last years. Valentinian, whose 
weakness was hardly compensated by the propriety of his 
conduct and his docility to St. Ambrose, was instructed in 
the elements of government by the older Emperor, who 
remained three years in Italy, to the lasting grief of its 
pagan citizens. He visited Rome, where the majority of 
the leading citizens still clung to an idealized version of the 
old cult, and appealed to the Senate to abandon the dying 
gods. No answer was made to his appeal, and he resorted 
to the growing practice of coercive legislation. In 391 he 
returned to Constantinople. 

Galla had married Theodosius soon after the destruction 
of Maximus. The Chronicle of Marcellinus puts the 
marriage in 386 ; Zosimus, more plausibly, implies that 
it took place in 387 or 388. From a curious statement in 
the Chronicle of Marcellinus it seems that she was sent to 



520 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

live in the palace at Constantinople while Theodosius 
remained in Italy. The statement is that the elder son of 
the Emperor, Arcadius, a boy of thirteen years, drove her 
out of the palace. Commentators are loath to believe that 
so young a prince could do this, but it is not in the least 
impossible, and the authority is respectable. We shall 
see that Arcadius was a peevish and worthless prince, 
indolently guided by eunuchs and servants, and capable 
of very cruel decisions. Theodosius had departed from 
the finer Imperial tradition of appointing a grave and 
distinguished scholar as the tutor of his sons, and had 
committed them to the care of a Roman deacon, Arsenius, 
who had a repute for piety. We can hardly regard the 
authority of a late Greek writer (Metaphrastes) as weighty 
enough to commend the statement that Arcadius set his 
servants to take the life of Arsenius for whipping him, 
but the unhappy events of the next chapter will show that 
the only result of this kind of education was to leave the 
character unformed, and throw the stress on external 
observances. 

In 391 Theodosius returned to Constantinople, and 
Galla entered upon her brief Imperial career. Whether 
or no we accept the biased picture which Zosimus offers 
us of the Eastern court, it is clear that it sustained a soft 
and excessive luxury at the cost of the enfeebled Empire. 
Large numbers of eunuchs found employment, and, with 
the genius of their class, intrigued for favour in the sleeping 
quarters, and in the service of the Empress and the Imperial 
children. The kitchen employed a regiment of ministers 
to the heavy and voluptuous table ; the circus and theatre 
supported vast numbers of mimes, dancers, and charioteers. 
Besides this large army of ministers to the Imperial 
pleasure, a second army of idle and avaricious place-seekers 
beset the palace, and extorted a generous revenue from 
the offices which were created for them in the army and 
the administration. It is even said that such offices were 
openly sold in the public places and in the palace of 
Constantinople. Strenuous as Theodosius was in the 



JUSTIN A 321 

field, he was not strong enough to sustain the burden of 
peace, and he unconsciously prepared the Empire for the 
avalanche that was soon to be cast upon it. 

But the drowsy indulgence of Theodosius was soon 
startled once more by a call to arms from the West. In 
the spring of 392 Valentinian was slain, or in despair slew 
himself, and a Frankish commander had put his purple 
robe upon the shoulders of a Roman rhetorician. The 
young Emperor had been so overshadowed by the power 
of his general that he had attempted to dismiss him, and 
had then been found dead with a cord round his neck. 
Theodosius again hesitated to exchange the softness of 
his palace for the rigours of a campaign. Galla " filled the 
palace with her lamentations," but Theodosius sent away 
the ambassadors of the usurper with pleasant words and 
presents, and continued for nearly two years to resist the 
appeals of his young Empress. It was not until the 
summer of 394 that he led out his legions for the punish- 
ment of the murderer, as Argobastes was believed to be. 
Galla did not live to see her brother avenged. She died 
in childbirth just as the army was about to start, and 
Theodosius is said to have mourned for her one day and 
then started for Italy. 

The issue does not now concern us. We pass on to a 
fresh generation, a new and more interesting group of 
Empresses and princesses. Suffice it to say that, partly 
by valour, partly by accident and treachery, the forces of 
Argobastes were destroyed, and the empurpled rhetorician 
was slain. The younger son of the Emperor, Honorius, 
was summoned from the East, and placed upon the throne 
of the West. Arcadius remained in feeble charge of the 
throne of Constantinople. And within a few months 
the powerful Emperor sank into the grave, and the 
Empire entered upon the unhappy reigns of Arcadius and 
Honorius. 



21 



CHAPTER XX 

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 

WITH the Imperial ladies of the courts of Arcadius 
and Honorius we enter upon the final act in the 
tragedy of the fall of Rome. The sun is sinking 
rapidly to the Western horizon ; the long shadows trail 
across the record of events ; the chill of evening contracts 
the life of the historic Empire. The only aspect of that 
tragedy that concerns us is a consideration of the part 
that women played in the gradual enfeeblement of the 
Roman Empire. While taking full account of the various 
causes assigned by historians, it may be said that the 
fall of Rome was due to a coincidence. The invasion of 
Europe by the fierce Huns had pressed the Germanic 
tribes against the Roman frontier just at the time when 
the Empire was particularly feeble. That it was inwardly 
outworn and doomed — that the organization of. a State 
has an appointed term of decay, like the frame of an 
individual — may be confidently challenged. Egypt main- 
tained its vigour for close on 8,000 years; Babylon for 
nearly 6,000. 

The only question we may touch here is whether the 
personality of the later Empresses counted for anything, 
either for good or evil, in this enfeeblement of the Empire ; 
and the answer is clear that, with one or two exceptions, 
they counted for neither. They had no deep or large 
influence on the life of the Empire, even through their 
husbands. The Roman ideal of womanhood was changing 
once more. As in the early days, they were diverted 

322 



TOE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 323 

from interest in public affairs, except in so far as the 
cause of the Church called for their interference. We must 
not conceive them as powerless witnesses of the gradual 
dissolution of the Empire. No one, man or woman, saw 
that the Empire was dissolving, or dreamed of its fall, 
until it lay in ruins under the feet of the northern tribes. 
None reflected that, since Constantine had assumed the 
purple, thirteen Emperors out of twenty had been either 
executed or murdered ; that the blood of able officers or 
servants had generally been mingled with that of the 
fallen ruler; and that hundreds of thousands of soldiers 
had been wasted in civil war. None reflected that, while 
they were distracted with religious quarrels, a formidable 
avalanche was gathering on the hills ; or that, while the 
courts absorbed enormous sums in Oriental display, the 
fiscal machinery of the State was running down. In any 
case, it was no longer the place of women to notice 
these things. Their duties were to rear the Imperial 
family, wear pretty robes of cloth of gold, and build 
churches. The age of Livia, Agrippina, or Plotina, was 
over. 

These reflections will be enforced by the lives of the 
interesting Empresses whom we have next to consider. 
The new Emperors were unmarried youths at the time 
when their father died. Arcadius, a little, dark, unpleasant- 
looking youth, whose laziness appeared in his dull, lustre- 
less eyes, was in his eighteenth year. Honorius was a boy 
of eleven, and as, during a reign of twenty-eight years, 
he never rose above the character or intelligence of a boy, 
and his two Empresses were timid young girls, we must 
dismiss them in a page; though that page must contain 
an event that sent a thrill of excitement through civilization 
— the fall of the city of Rome. So little had our Imperial 
characters to do with it that a later age amused itself by 
saying that, when Honorius was told that " Rome was 
taken," he wept for the supposed loss of his favourite 
fowl, which bore that name. 

The real master of the Western world, over which 



324 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

young Honorius had nominal sway, was a powerful and 
gifted commander, Stilicho, of Vandal extraction. He had 
married Serena, the beautiful niece of Theodosius, and 
he led the armies and governed the Western Empire until 
his death. In 398, in his thirteenth year, Honorius was 
directed to wed Maria, the elder daughter of Stilicho. It 
was said that Theodosius had desired the union. Serena, 
at all events, desired it, and, although her daughter 
was yet immature, the wedding took place at Milan in 
398. All that we have to say of her is that she died some 
time within the next ten years — probably, as Tillemont 
calculates, in the year 404. Her body was embalmed 
and buried in a Christian church at Rome, where the 
poor crumbling frame, laden with gold, was discovered 
in 1544. 

In the year 408 Honorius married his deceased wife's 
sister, Thermantia. Tillemont very properly laments that 
he finds no record of any protest on the part of the 
Bishop of Rome — who probably celebrated it — against this 
irregular marriage, but the modern reader will be more 
seriously concerned to hear the argument with which 
Serena urged it upon her reluctant husband. Maria, she 
said, had died a virgin. Before entrusting her immature 
child to the bed of Honorius, she had had some obscure 
operation performed on her, which would guard her 
virginity. Certainly, Maria had had no children. Ther- 
mantia was equally unprepared for marriage, Zosimus says, 
and the operation was repeated. It was a superfluous 
sacrifice to the ambition of Serena, because Stilicho fell, in 
a palace intrigue, a few months later, and the little maid 
was restored to her mother. 

Such was the short and melancholy story of the 
Empresses Maria and iEmilia Materna Thermantia, as 
an inscription calls the younger. Their monument was 
terrible. Within a few months the avalanche of the Gothic 
army descended from the Alps and devastated Italy; and 
Serena was, with the consent of her cousin Placidia, the 
Emperor's sister, strangled by the Senate on the light, and 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 325 

probably false, charge of communicating with the enemy. 
Zosimus, at least, says that she was innocent ; but he is 
not surprised at her fate, as she had one day appropriated 
a jewelled ornament from the statue of one of his goddesses. 
Within two years Rome was sacked by the Goths, and 
Placidia was carried off by them. 

We turn to the East, to follow the less tragic, but hardly 
less interesting, fortunes of Eudoxia and Eudocia. In the 
East, as in the West, Theodosius had left a powerful 
minister to guide the hands of his young and unpromising 
son. But the eastern minister, Rufinus, had not the manly 
qualities of Stilicho. He had entered the palace by craft, 
not by military exploits, and had easily dissembled his 
vices from the too indulgent eye of Theodosius. When 
that Emperor died, he cast aside the cloak, and pursued 
his native avarice, and exercised his cruelty, without 
restraint. By fines, taxes, despoilments, and the unscrupu- 
lous ruin of his opponents, the hated Gaul amassed 
wealth and power, and ruled like an autocrat. He had a 
daughter of marriageable age, and Arcadius seemed to listen 
in compliant mood when he proposed that she should 
become his Empress. The task of destroying an opponent 
took him for a time to Antioch, and he returned to hear 
that the Emperor was preparing for marriage. He awaited 
the appointed day with eagerness. At length the hymeneal 
procession set out from the palace, and the people gathered 
to witness its passage to the house of Rufinus, a superb 
villa in one of the suburbs. To the intense surprise of all, 
it stopped at a house in the city, and the blushing and 
beautiful daughter of a Prankish chief was announced to 
be the choice of the Emperor. 

While Rufinus was pursuing his vengeance at Antioch, 
the eunuchs of the palace had conspired to defeat his 
plan and undermine his power. The chief of them was 
Eutropius, a slave by birth, castrated immediately after 
birth that he might bring a bigger price, and rising in time 
from the occupation of hair-dresser to the daughter of 
General Arintheus to the position of high chamberlain at 



326 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

the palace. Such were the rulers of Emperors in the 
fourth century. Eutropius knew that Arcadius had no 
attraction to the daughter of Rufinus, and chafed under the 
authority of her burly father. He cast about for a prettier 
companion, and soon had the affection of Arcadius safely 
engaged. The temporary absence of Rufinus gave them an 
opportunity, and Constantinople was enlivened by the rare 
spectacle of an Imperial marriage, and the still rarer 
spectacle of the defeat of Rufinus. 

Eudoxia — such is the Greek name under which the new 
Empress is presented to us — was the beautiful daughter of 
Bauto, chief of the Franks. Historians, politely accepting 
the assurance of some of the writers of the time, say that 
she was being "educated" at Constantinople, her father 
having died in the service of the Eastern army. It is, 
perhaps, a pity to disturb the plausible phrase, but the 
duty of a biographer is stern. The house in the city from 
which she was taken to wed the Emperor was occupied by 
two young men of wealth. They were the sons of the 
commander Promotus, who had been one of the first 
victims of Rufinus. One of these young men, Zosimus 
says, " had a beautiful maid " in the house. We will not 
inquire too closely. The stern ideals of the Germanic 
tribes had relaxed as they came into closer contact with 
civilization, and it became common for them to lend or sell 
their daughters to the Romans. We remember the adven- 
ture of Pipera a century before. Eutropius submitted an 
adequate picture of the girl to Arcadius, whose pulse was 
quickened, and the son of Promotus easily parted with his 
tender pupil when he learned that it was for the purpose 
of discomfiting the destroyer of his father. 

Eudoxia had no less spirit than beauty of person, and 
she would watch with interest the duel between the wily 
eunuch and the powerful Gaul. Arcadius, " whose feeble 
and stupid goodness," says Tillemont candidly, "brought 
frightful evils on Church and State," was a pawn in the 
game. But the big, wealthy, powerful Gaul now found 
a sterner opponent in Stilicho, of the Western Empire, and 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 327 

within a year his head was separated from his body, and 
his wife and daughter were permitted to remain alive at 
Jerusalem, Eutropius and Eudoxia now " led Arcadius 
like a dumb beast," in the words of Zosimus, and sucked 
the resources of the Empire. The people of Constantinople 
gained nothing by the revolution. They had carried in 
triumph the grisly, extortionate hand of Rufinus through 
the streets of the city, but the supple hand of the eunuch 
proved as formidable. He surrounded himself with spies 
and informers, filled the prisons with men whose property 
he desired for himself or his friends, scattered statues of 
himself through the city, and assumed every- title of honour 
short of that of Augustus. He would press his deformed 
person and painted face into the armour of a man, to 
review the troops, and would harangue the Senate Vv^ith a 
feeble imitation of the authority of a statesman. While 
his exactions and the luxury of the court enfeebled the 
Empire of the East, he alienated the power of the West, and 
had Stilicho branded as a public enemy. And the Goths 
and Huns crept nearer, 

Arcadius, lazily riding in his gold-plated chariot, studded 
with large gems, in robes of silk embroidered with golden 
dragons, or playing the monarch on a throne of solid gold, 
with a crowd of adoring eunuchs before him, had no more 
appreciation than a peasant of a Cappadocian village of the 
true situation of the Empire. Eudoxia, beautiful, haughty, 
spoiled, revelling in the luxury of the palace, generous 
to the Church and the poor, floated soothingly with the 
stream. She lived the languid life of an Oriental princess, 
within the confines of the palace, and was rarely seen even 
by the greater part of the palace servants. The only 
occasion when the populace saw her quit the marble city, 
which the palace of Constantine had become, was when, 
in 398, she walked humbly, with downcast eyes, but 
clothed in purple silk, with a glittering diadem on her 
head, by the side of St, Chrysostom, as he transferred 
certain relics of the saints, Chrysostom would find her in 
a different temper in a few years. 



328 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

The arrogance of Eutropius at last passed all bounds, 
and he ventured in the year 400 to threaten to expel 
Eudoxia from the palace. Whether she knew it or no, 
the time was ripe for the destruction of the repulsive 
minister. The people groaned under his terrible exactions, 
his infamous legislation, and his bloody tyranny ; the 
leaders of the troops were prepared to sacrifice him. 
Eudoxia took her baby girls, Pulcheria and Arcadia, in her 
arms, and fled in tears to the Emperor. Arcadius, " be- 
coming an Emperor for a moment," says Philostorgius, 
signed the sentence of his favourite, and the eunuch soon 
found people and soldiers pressing, like wolves, for his 
destruction. He took refuge in a church, where Chrysostom 
protected him from the fiery crowd, but quitted it after 
a time, apparently on the oath of either Eudoxia or Arcadius 
that his life would be spared. He was exiled, recalled, 
tried, and — oath or no oath — put to death by the public 
executioner. 

Eudoxia's title of nobilissima (" most noble ") had been 
elevated to that of Augusta at the beginning of the year 
400, and her second daughter was born in April of the same 
year.^ She was now complete mistress of Arcadius and 
the Empire, and she published her dignity with such ex- 
travagance that the Western court sent an angry protest 
that,incausingher statues to be borne through the provinces, 
she had exceeded the privileges of her sex. In the follow- 
ing year she completed her ascendancy by giving birth 
to a boy, Theodosius H, and seemed to have a prospect 
of a long and luxurious, if useless, reign. But she had 
meantime quarrelled with Chrysostom, and she was to 
pass through a period of humihation to a premature grave. 

In 398 Eutropius had transferred the austere and eloquent 
Chrysostom from his presbytery in Antioch to the archi- 
episcopal palace at Constantinople. The stern monk — as 
John of the Golden Mouth always remained at heart — was 

1 Hence Tillemont and others, who give these dates, must be wrong in 
placing the quarrel with Eutropius in 399. Philostorgius expressly says that 
she had two daughters in her arms when she appealed to Arcadius, 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 329 

horrified from the first at the vice and luxury of the 
Christians of the Imperial city, and even of their clergy, 
but he allowed two years to elapse before he began his 
fiery campaign against the sins of the laity. ^ He applied 
himself first to the reform of the priests and the control of 
the monks. With that we have no concern.^ It is enough 
to say that the clergy bitterly resented his reforms, and 
were ready to co-operate with Eudoxia in an effort to get 
rid of him. In 400 he began to attack the easy ways of the 
laity more sternly, and it is probable that some feeling was 
created between him and the Empress over the massacre 
of the Gothic Arian soldiers, which took place in that year. 
Their commander Gainas had rebelled, and Arcadius had 
virtually surrendered to him. He marched his troops to 
the city, obtained the use of a church for them, and allowed 
them to roam about, to the irritation of the people ; until 
at last the people rose and slew seven thousand of the 
heretics. 

It seems that Eudoxia was alienated from Chrysostom, 
who had resented the grant of a church, from that time. 
When, in the following year, St. Porphyry of Gaza came to 
the capital to obtain an Imperial order to destroy the pagan 
temples of his town, Chrysostom declined to introduce him 
at court, and referred him to the eunuch Amantius. The 
sequel is not without interest in a study of the Empress. 
The holy man was presented to Eudoxia, and promised 
that she should bear a boy if she would secure the 
destruction of paganism in Gaza. She promised to do so, 
but Arcadius, who seems to have resented religious wrangles, 
refused to grant permission. Then the boy was born, and 
Eudoxia felt an obligation to secure Porphyry's request. 
She instructed him to draw up a formal petition, and present 
it to the baby-Caesar as he was carried from the baptismal 
font. The noble who carried the baby was then instructed 

' See Professor Puech's "Saint Jean Chrysostome," 1891. 

' The curious reader will find Chrysostom's surprising strictures of the 
clergy more than confirmed in the letters of Jerome, and his fierce denuncia- 
tion of the monks borne out in Augustine's treatise on them. 



330 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

how he was to behave, and a little comedy was arranged. 
Porphyry presented his paper to the infant Caesar. The 
noble read a little of it to the baby in a low voice, so that 
Arcadius should not hear, and then bobbed the child's head 
as a sign of assent, Arcadius wearily overlooked the trick, 
eight beautiful temples were burned at Gaza, and Eudoxia 
supplied the funds for building a large church on their 
ruins. Tillemont, whose admiring course through the 
fourth century is much tempered by groans, complains that 
" this kind of piety favours only the demons." 

Chrysostom then went on to denounce, in unmeasured 
language, the vicious and luxurious ways of the wealthy 
women, especially widows, of his church. He had diverted 
the coins of the laity from the army of monks, deprived the 
clergy of their mistresses, and declared that the great 
majority of the bishops of his province were hopelessly 
corrupt. With the aid of his rival, the Bishop of Alexandria, 
they conspired against him, and they reached the ear of 
the Empress through the courtly and comfortable bishop, 
Severian. The other ear of the Empress was now assailed 
by the wealthy widows who smarted under the preacher's 
fierce lash. Such fine ladies as Marsa and Castricia would 
not be likely to sit under the Socialistic oratory of the 
archbishop, but shorthand (notatio) was as commonly used 
in those days as in our own, and he could thus irritate the 
eye of the rich as well as gladden the ear of the poor. 
They brooded darkly over his impersonal strictures, and 
no doubt detected occasional references to the luxurious 
Empress in them. In fine. Archbishop Theophilus was 
summoned from Alexandria ; the bishops of the province 
eagerly drew up and passed a lengthy indictment of their 
superior ; and, before the orthodox population could gather 
what was happening, their orator was on the way to exile. 

But the triumph of Eudoxia was as brief as that of 
Justina. The people rose in fury, and, after the slaughter 
of seven thousand trained soldiers, made a light matter of 
the monks and sailors of Theophilus. When, in addition, 
an earthquake shook the province, Eudoxia prudently 




EUDOXIA 




PULCHERIA 

ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 331 

yielded to the human pressure, under the decent pretext 
of obeying the divine will, Chrysostom returned to his 
church, and the sight of the gay fleet that set out to meet 
him, the flaring illumination of the shores, the frenzied 
rejoicing of the returning procession, must have filled the 
palace on the heights with bitterness. Such a truce could 
be observed with cold discretion by neither party, and it 
was not long before the struggle was renewed. 

In honour of the birth of the third daughter of the 
Empress, Marina, a silver statue of her was erected, on 
a column of porphyry, at the door of the Senate. The 
Prefect of the city commemorated the event with games or 
other rejoicings in the square before the statue, and they 
were naturally accompanied by profane, if not licentious, 
gaiety. Straight opposite, across the square, was the door 
of Chrysostom's church, and the devout regarded this 
demonstration as an outrage on religion. Chrysostom's 
sermons become more explicit. In a later age a sermon 
was published under his name, in which the people — or the 
readers — were reminded of the infamous Herodias clamour- 
ing for the head of John. The sermon is generally regarded 
as spurious, but we have the weighty authority of Socrates 
for the fact that the extempore preacher did utter the fatal 
name of Herodias. The conflict ended with the exile of the 
archbishop (June 404), but on the following night his 
church was found to be in flames, and the fire spread to, 
and almost destroyed, the Senate-house, a building adorned 
with the most exquisite marbles and works of art. 

The condition of Constantinople, the anxiety of Eudoxia, 
during the following months, may be imagined. It is 
enough to know that Eudoxia met a painful death, through 
miscarriage, in the month of September of the same year 
(404). I will not reproduce the horrible details that a more 
orthodox age discovered in connexion with her death. ^ If 

1 Gibbon makes her survive Chrysostom, and die in 408, But Tillemont 
has pointed out that the " Life of Chrysostom " by George of Alexandria, on 
which he seems to have relied, forges letters, and is quite unreliable. The 
earlier writers put the death of Eudoxia in 404. 



332 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

Chrysostom spoke from " a bitter disillusion," as Dr. Puech 
holds, Eudoxia had not less cause to be embittered. Even 
her religious zeal had led her into the most painful 
experiences. For the State, in which she had high power, 
she did nothing. The vultures gathered on the hills, while 
the court absorbed its little soul in voluptuous pomp, and 
the people fought each other over creeds. We may dissent 
from the hard verdict of Gibbon, that Eudoxia indulged her 
passions while the Empire decayed, and we must regard as 
too frivolous for consideration the suspicion of unchastity 
which he reproduces ; but we must grant that, where 
Eudoxia's action was not selfish, it was generally useless, 
and frequently mischievous. 

We have carried the slender story of the Empresses in 
the West as far as the year 410, and we shall find no other 
Empress there until 421. We may, therefore, continue the 
record of the East, and consider the romantic story of 
Eudocia, before we proceed to the last scene in the Empire 
of the West. 

After an ignoble reign of thirteen years the elder son of 
Theodosius died in his bed in the year 408. His only son, 
Theodosius II, was clothed with the purple, in his sixth 
year, and a prudent and experienced minister controlled 
the State for the next seven years. In 415 Pulcheria, the 
elder sister of Theodosius, was named Augusta, and 
gradually assumed the guardianship of her brother and 
the control of the State. She was as yet only in her 
sixteenth year, and Theodosius was only two years younger, 
but her cold, decisive temper compensated in some measure 
for the strength which Theodosius wholly lacked, and she 
held the reins of the Empire. Deeply religious, she took 
herself, and induced her younger sisters to take, a vow of 
chastity, which was written in gold and diamonds on the 
wall of the public church. The palace offered the singular 
spectacle of a nunnery within a luxurious court. Only 
pious eunuchs and women were allowed to approach the 
Imperial virgins, in whose sober apartments no music was 
ever heard save that of the psalm and sacred song ; while 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 333 

the weakly youth was educated in the pomp that befits a 
king, as well as the propriety that adorns a Christian. He 
learned both lessons with success ; but we cannot avoid a 
suspicion that less earnest and assiduous efforts were made 
to fit him for the task of taking in his own hands the levers 
of the heavy machinery of the State. It is proper to add, 
however, that, partly from circumstances, partly from the 
prudence and care of Pulcheria, that machinery ran with 
unaccustomed ease, and the Empire enjoyed a span of peace 
and prosperity. 

At length the anxious question of the Imperial marriage 
arose, and the virginal Pulcheria confronted it with her 
usual coolness and decision. The task was simplified, in 
a sense, by Theodosius. He declared that he would marry 
only a young lady of exceptional bodily charm, and would 
pay no attention to wealth or dignity. It may have 
occurred to Pulcheria that an Empress thus elevated would 
be less likely to dispute her power than some woman 
who had been born into the world of large action. She 
began her search, with the aid of Paulinus, a youth who 
had been educated with Theodosius and was his intimate 
friend. 

One day, at this period, a young Athenian girl was 
brought into her presence with a petition. She was of 
the fairest Athenian type ; a supple and graceful young 
woman, with skin of a snowy complexion, large intelli- 
gent eyes, and a beautiful head of golden hair. Further, 
she pleaded her cause, in perfect Greek, with a surpris- 
ing restraint, eloquence, and art. She was Athenais, the 
daughter of an Athenian teacher. He had cultivated her 
mind and her beauty with all the resources of his art, 
and had, at his death, left her only a hundred pieces of 
gold, on the pretext that she was wealthy enough in her 
advantages. She begged her brothers to share the in- 
heritance mor6 justly, but they refused. She had there- 
fore come with a relative to the house of an aunt at 
Constantinople, and asked for a just distribution of her 
father's money. Pulcheria's interest was, not in the case, 



334 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

but in the girl. She took the aunt aside, and prudently 
inquired if the girl was a maid and a Christian. Athenais 
was declared to be a virgin, though a pagan ; but the 
defect was one that could easily be removed. 

Pulcheria joyfully told her brother that she had found 
the beauty he desired, and described her. They arranged 
a second visit, during which Theodosius and Paulinus 
should inspect the maiden from behind a curtain. In a 
short time Athenais had changed her name into JEha 
Eudocia, changed her religion into that of Christ, and 
changed her condition into that of wife of the Emperor. 
She was married on June 7th, 421, in, it is believed, the 
twentieth year of her age. There was consternation in 
the home she had quitted at Athens, and her brothers hid 
themselves in the provinces. Eudocia had them sought 
and conducted to Constantinople. There they learned to 
their surprise that she thought herself indebted to their 
conduct for her fortune, and they were richly rewarded. 

From these pleasant girlish traits we pass to the in- 
evitable struggle with Pulcheria. Theodosius remained 
an Imperial nonentity. He could hunt, paint, and carve, 
but public business so bored him that he signed docu- 
ments without reading them. One da}^ Pulcheria put a 
parchment before him, and he, as usual, blindly appended 
his name. Shortly afterwards he summoned Eudocia, 
and was told that she was now the slave of Pulcheria, 
and awaited her orders. The document he had signed 
was a deed of sale of his wife, but it does not appear 
that the little stratagem made much impression on him. 
Pulcheria still held the reins. Eudocia had her first 
child at the end of 422, and was, in the following January, 
entitled Augusta. The court had a visit, too, from the 
Empress of the West, Galla Placidia, and her daughter, and 
large matters were discussed. In 433 we may, perhaps, 
trace some influence of Eudocia on legislation. An edict 
imposing the death-sentence on the remaining pagans 
may be confidently ascribed to Pulcheria; but an edict 
reforming and enlarging the higher schools of Constan- 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 335 

tinople seems rather to remind us of the Athenian 
scholar's daughter. She occupied much of her leisure 
in writing historical and religious poetry, and the little 
that survives of it has been recently edited by Ludwich. 
It is correct in form and devoid of inspiration. 

The years passed tranquilly until 437, when we begin 
to suspect that there is friction with Pulcheria. Few 
things had happened, beyond the echo of the stormy 
movements of the West, and the disquieting advance of 
the Huns, to disturb the life of the court. One year (434) 
had, indeed, brought a strange thrill into the Imperial 
nunnery. A princess of the Western Empire, Honoria, 
came to Constantinople, enceinte by her own steward. 
But the hard lot of Honoria, and the romantic devices 
by which she sought to enliven it, will occupy us later. 
Pulcheria promptly enclosed the fiery young princess 
in a convent, and the scandal would be mentioned only 
in whispers. Three years later (437) the Western 
Emperor, Valentinian III, came to Constantinople, and 
led away Eudocia's beautiful daughter, Licinia Eudoxia, 
to share his trembling throne. The next detail is that, in 
439, Eudocia made a lengthy pilgrimage to Palestine, and 
there can be little doubt that her absence from the palace 
for a year — which is unconvincingly connected by Gibbon 
with the marriage of her daughter, two years before — was 
due, in part or entirely, to some quarrel with either 
Theodosius or Pulcheria, most probably the latter. 

At Antioch, on the journey, Eudocia enjoyed the 
prestige of her solitary and independent dignity. From a 
golden throne she delivered a studied oration to the 
Senate, and the tumultuous applause and voting of statues 
to her must have greatly increased her self-consciousness. 
The shower of gold she rained upon the churches and 
monasteries of Palestine, and indeed all along her route, 
elicited a no less stimulating demonstration. She returned 
to Constantinople, apparently about the end of 439, with 
a larger sense of her importance, and with such priceless 
relics as the arm of St. Stephen and the authentic picture 



336 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

of Mary which Luke the Physician had painted. It is only 
at a much later date that Greek writers add to her luggage 
a phial of the Virgin's milk, some underclothing of the 
infant Christ, and similar treasures. 

The pilgrimage was the turning-point in the career of 
Eudocia. So far her life had been one of splendid and 
powerless prestige ; it now rapidly darkens with intrigue, 
is overshadowed by tragedy and suspicion, and soon ends 
in a virtual exile. We are sufficiently acquainted with the 
writers of the time to expect that they will throw very 
little light on this fresh Imperial tragedy, but, using the 
later and less weighty Greek writers with discretion, we 
may obtain a fairly confident idea of its main features. 
Two facts are related by writers of the time, and are 
beyond question. In the year following Eudocia's return, 
her friend, and the intimate friend of the Emperor, the 
charming and accomplished Paulinus, was exiled and put 
to death without public trial. The second fact is that, 
a few years later, Eudocia left the palace for ever, to 
spend the remainder of her life at Jerusalem. 

The later Byzantine writers give a rounded story of 
these events, and, on the whole, one is disposed to think 
that in this case they are revealing the suppressed truth. 
Theophanes (in his " Chronographia ") says that a eunuch 
named Chrysaphius rose into favour, and urged Eudocia 
to secure the dismissal of Pulcheria. They persuade 
Theodosius that, since Pulcheria has taken a vow of 
virginity, her proper place is among the deaconesses of 
the Church, and Archbishop Flavian is instructed to take 
her away. Flavian, however, prefers to have her in the 
palace, and he directs her simply to live apart for a time 
and wait. Then, in 440, occurs the execution — one may 
almost say murder — of Paulinus. These later Greek 
writers all give a romantic story in connexion with it. As 
Theodosius and Eudocia go to church on Epiphany 
morning, a peasant presents the Emperor with a remarkably 
large apple. He gives it to Eudocia, who privately sends 
it to Paulinus. Unluckily, Paulinus in turn presents it to 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 337 

the Emperor, who sternly asks Eudocia what she has done 
with it. She declares, and repeats with a most solemn oath, 
that she has eaten it. Paulinus is at once sent away, 
and decapitated. A much nearer and more weighty 
authority, John Malala, confirms, in substance, this story 
of the apple, and says that Paulinus was suspected of 
intimacy with the Empress. There is no serious reason 
to doubt it, nor is any other reason suggested for the 
murder of Paulinus ; but whether Eudocia was guilty, or 
the suspicion was inspired by the servants of Pulcheria, 
we are unable to determine. 

The eunuch then, says Theophanes, presses Eudocia to 
attack Flavian and Pulcheria. He reminds her of ** all the 
bitter things she had endured from Pulcheria," and covers 
the human motive with a pretence of religious zeal. We 
know, at least, that Eudocia embraced the Eutychian 
heresy, which Chrysaphius had adopted, and that a Church- 
council was summoned in 441 that put an end to Flavian. 
The intrigue, however, runs on in obscurity until Eudocia 
suddenly asks permission to retire to Jerusalem. Theo- 
dosius could not divorce her, but we can easily believe 
that, as these writers say, he treated her with such severity, 
repeatedly reminding her of Paulinus, that she was driven 
into exile. Pulcheria returned to the palace, and resumed 
her control of the Emperor and the Empire. 

Gibbon scouts these " Greek fictions," but, not only 
has he not taken sufficient account of John Malala, whose 
authority he recognizes, but a detail he adds from the 
still more authoritative Chronicle of Marcellinus (which is 
almost contemporary) gives a very serious confirmation. 
In the suite of Eudocia, when she set out for Palestine, 
were a priest named Severus and a deacon named John, 
favourites of hers. They had not long left Constantinople 
when an officer named Saturninus, of the faction opposed 
to Eudocia, came upon them with an order to put Severus 
and John to death. It appears that they too were executed 
for supposed intimacy with the Empress. Eudocia lost her 
self-control at this brutal outrage, and bade her servants 



338 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

make an end of Saturninus. When Theodosius heard, he 
stripped Eudocia of her Imperial prerogatives, and left her 
in the position of an ordinary citizen. These authentic 
statements of Marcellinus strongly confirm the story, and 
it is clear that the Byzantine court was stained by a sordid 
quarrel and several brutal murders. 

The romance of Eudocia's career was not yet over. 
Marcellinus sends her to Jerusalem in 444: the later 
writers in 442. However that may be, in the year 445 
we find her again embarking on an unhappy adventure. 
The monks of Palestine were infected with the Eutychian 
heresy, and they welcomed so powerful a patroness. 
With the aid of her servants they ousted the orthodox 
bishop of Jerusalem, and a vigorous monk was put in 
his place. The monk-bishop, with his militant army of 
ten thousand monkish followers, held Jerusalem for twenty 
months, in spite of the Imperial troops, drove all the 
orthodox bishops out of Palestine, and slew and cast to 
the dogs a number of their followers. In this quaint 
company the delicate Greek Empress continued to build 
churches and monasteries for three years, but when she 
hears at length of the misfortunes of her daughter, which 
the Bishop of Rome, as well as the courts of Ravenna 
and Constantinople, ascribe to her heresy, she sends to 
consult the famous hermit of the pillar, Simeon Stylites. 
Simeon recommends her to confer with a certain saintly 
monk of the desert. The monk will neither leave his 
desert for her, nor permit a woman to enter it. She 
therefore builds a tower on the hill some miles away, 
and in that safe and public elevation the monk enlightens 
her out of her heresy. 

Eudocia brought her adventurous career to a close in 
460, protesting with her last breath that she was innocent 
of the charge of unchastity. Pulcheria continued to rule 
the Eastern Empire in the name of Theodosius until he 
died, in the year 450, inglorious and unhonoured. It was 
now seen that the prosperity of the Empire in her earlier 
years was a hollov/ truce of circumstances. When the 



THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND -EUDOCIA 339 

fierce and rapacious Huns approached it, in 446 and 447, 
the Eastern Empire tremblingly purchased peace by the 
most ignominious concessions. When Theodosius died, 
she assumed sole control of the Empire, and the head 
of the eunuch Chrysaphius was at once removed from 
his shoulders. But the pressure of her people forced 
her to marry, and an aged Senator, Marcian, engaged 
to share her throne without sharing her virginal bed. 
To his more vigorous hands the affairs of State now 
passed, and Pulcheria maintained her virtue and piety 
to the end. But we must now leave the Oriental pomp, 
the emasculated frame, and the splendid piety of the 
Byzantine court, to conclude our story in the West. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 

THE course of our inquiry has led us through five 
centuries of change. We have passed from the 
sober and virile integrity of the first Imperial pair, 
the golden age of Roman life and letters, to the successive 
depths of the Caesars. We have then seen the decrepit 
and corrupt city refreshed with an inflow of sound pro- 
vincial blood, the enervated patrician families replaced on 
the throne by vigorous soldiers, and a new period of 
sobriety and prosperity open under the Stoics, to sink 
again under the burden of vice and luxury. Diocletian 
restores its strength, and then a singular and momentous 
change comes over the face of the Empire. The white 
homes of the gods perish or decay, the gay processions 
no longer enliven the streets, the cross of Christ heads 
the legions and towers austerely above the public buildings 
and monuments. The ante-chambers of the Emperors are 
filled with Christian bishops, and the rulers of the world 
bend meekly before the ragged figures of monks and 
tremble at the threats of lowly priests. 

We return to the Western world to find another and 
a greater change. Rome has fallen, the frontiers are 
obliterated, the provinces, even to Africa, are cowering 
under the armies of the barbarians. Poverty, misery, 
and violence are scattered over the Empire, as if the 
departing gods had sown its fields with salt or with 
dragons' teeth as they retired to Olympus. Civilization, 
law, culture, art, seem to be doomed, and the end of the 

340 



THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 341 

world is confidently expected. But amid the crumbling 
frame of the vast Empire a few shades of Emperors and 
Empresses linger for a generation, and we may glance 
briefly at their sobered features and adventurous experi- 
ences. 

The chief figure of interest is JElia. Galla Placidia, the 
sister of Honorius, whom we found visiting Constantinople 
in 423. Her adventures began when the Goths invested 
Rome in 408. She is then mentioned as concurring with 
the Senate in the pitiful execution of her cousin, the 
widow of Stilicho. Placidia was then in her eighteenth 
year. Bearing a heavy ransom, the Gothic army went 
away to harass her useless and trembling brother at 
Ravenna, and Placidia thought fit to remain at Rome. 
It still contained wealth enough to capitulate to barbarians 
on fair terms. But the Goths returned in 410. Rome 
was awakened in the dead of night by the blare of their 
trumpets, and looked out to find palaces in flames, the 
streets filled with the terrible Goths, and the work of 
looting already begun. After six days of pillage they 
retreated northward, taking Placidia with them. We 
cannot follow her closely in that extraordinary march. 
She was treated as a princess, however, and two years 
later was sought in marriage by the new king of the 
Goths, Ataulph. Ataulph was a barbarian only in name ; 
a large, handsome man, princely, intelligent, and amiable. 
He aspired to be a Roman Emperor. Honorius weakly 
resented the proposal, and demanded that he should 
prove the friendship he offered to Rome by returning 
Placidia. For two years she had wandered over Italy in 
the Gothic army. 

It appears that Placidia was attracted to the graceful 
and courtly Goth, and they were married at Narbonne — 
the Goths having now returned to Gaul — in 414. When 
she reflected on the splendour of the wedding gifts, she 
may have thought that even an alliance with a Roman 
prince could not be more magnificent. Fifty beautiful 
youths, clothed in silk, brought to her one hundred dishes 



342 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

laden with the gold and jewels which the Goths had 
brought from Rome. But Ataulph was assassinated in 
the following year, and Placidia sank again to the 
position of captive. She had to walk twelve miles on 
foot, amid a crowd of captives, before the victorious 
barbarian who had slain her husband. Within another 
year her persecutor was slain, and his more humane 
successor restored her— or sold her — to the court at 
Ravenna. 

The Roman commander Constantius, into whose hands 
she was committed, at once claimed her in marriage. 
Honorius had promised that he should marry her if, by 
whatever means, he recovered her from the Goths. Placidia 
shrank resentfully from his embraces, and found his coarse, 
large, surly person a poor exchange for her handsome 
Gothic husband. The wedding took place, however, in 
417, and Placidia settled down to the prosy duties of a 
matron, giving birth, in succession, to the princess Honoria 
and the future Emperor Valentinian III. In 421 her 
husband compelled the weak-minded Honorius to clothe 
him with the purple. Placidia received the title of Augusta, 
and a better prospect seemed to open before her. But 
Constantius died within a few months, and it was not 
long before she fell into a violent quarrel with Honorius. 
The cause of the quarrel is, as usual, obscure. Some 
of the later writers suggest that Honorius became 
enamoured of his sister in her young widowhood. We 
know only that the palace at Ravenna was filled with 
bitter recriminations, its courts were stained with the blood 
of their followers, and Placidia fled to Constantinople with 
her children. 

Honorius died a few months later (August 423), and 
Placidia, confirmed in her title of Augusta by Theodosius, 
was sent in the following year to claim the throne for 
Theodosius, at the head of a considerable force. A secretary 
had usurped the vacant throne during her absence. It 
was the spring of 425 before they set out from Thessalonica 
for Italy ; Placidia was with the cavalry, which reached 




PLACIDIA 




ENPHEMIA 

ENLARGED KRO-M COINS IN THE BRITISH IIVSEUM 



THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 343 

and took Aquileia with great speed. There, after a short 
time, she received the captive usurper. His hand was 
cut off in the public Circus, he was placed on an ass and 
conducted round the town, amid the jeers of the crowd 
and the actors of the Circus, and was finally beheaded. 
They then proceeded to Ravenna. Valentinian, a boy of 
six years, was created Emperor of the West, and Placidia 
settled down to a long period of government in his name. 

As the legislation which followed, bearing the name 
of Valentinian but breathing the spirit of Placidia, was 
mainly of an ecclesiastical character, we will not linger 
over it. She fell ruthlessly upon Pagans, Jews, Pelagians, 
Manichaeans, and every other class who were obnoxious 
to her clergy. As in the case of most of the later 
Empresses, her piety so impressed the writers of the 
time that her personality is almost entirely hidden from us. 
Apart from her decrees of religious coercion, we know 
her only as experiencing, not doing, things. Procopius, 
not a biased historian, severely complains that she reared 
her son in a luxurious softness that led inevitably to his 
later vices and his violent death ; and it is frequently 
suspected that she had no eagerness to see him fitly 
educated in the duties of a prince. Cassiodorus pronounces 
that she conducted the affairs of the State with wavering 
and incompetent counsel, just at the time when Rome 
most urgently needed a firm and enlightened ruler. 
Tillemont, after praising her piety, admits sadly that she 
brought great evils upon her afflicted Empire. 

Though Rome had been looted by the Goths at their 
leisure, and barbaric armies commanded every province, 
the cause of the Empire was not yet lost. A judicious 
policy might have utilized the mutual hatreds of the 
various tribes, and have put the able commanders, who 
were still in the service of Rome, at the head of formid- 
able armies. But the weakness and obtuseness of Placidia 
led, on the contrary, to the loss of her finest general, 
her last free province, and a large proportion of her 
troops. Listening injudiciously to the malignant per- 



344 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

suasions of one general, iEtius, she commanded the other, 
Count Boniface, to relinquish his post in Africa, under 
the impression that he meditated treachery. iEtius at 
the same time warned Boniface that the recall was due 
to suspicion, and the gallant officer was driven into re- 
bellion. He invited the Vandals to Africa, and soon 
twenty thousand of the tall, fair-haired northerners, with 
a vast crowd of dependents and followers, spread over 
the province. Placidia discovered too late the deceit o 
^tius. She was induced to send a friendly ambassador 
to Boniface, and the fraud was at once detected. But 
the Vandals could not be dislodged, Boniface was slain 
(432) in his struggle with them, ^Etius was driven to the 
camp of the Huns, and Africa, the granary of Rome, was 
irretrievably lost. 

The next blow that threatened the distracted Empire 
was an invasion of the Huns. Placidia cannot be held 
responsible for the subsequent calamities, for iEtius, 
strong in his alliance with the Huns, had forced his way 
back into power, and was the real governor of the Empire. 
But the formidable task he undertook was made more 
difficult by a romantic and unhappy occurrence within 
Placidia's domestic circle. We have already spoken of 
her daughter Honoria, who came in disgrace to Constan- 
tinople in 434. The great distinction of the Constantino- 
politan court, the possession of three royal virgins, seems 
to have excited the pious jealousy of Placidia, and she 
apparently designed that her court should not lack its 
Vestal Virgin. We are not told that any vow was imposed 
on the young Honoria, but she was reared with the 
discipline of a conventual novice, and given to under- 
stand that the exalted state of virginity was assigned to 
her. In 433 the title of Augusta was bestowed on her, 
in some compensation of her sacrifice. But the daughter 
of Constantius had thicker blood in her veins than the 
daughters of Arcadius, and the claustral regime — the 
restriction of attendance to eunuchs and women— does 
not seem to have been rigorously enforced at Ravenna. 



THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 345 

In 434 the seventeen-year-old princess was discovered 
to be in a painful condition, and was dispatched to 
Constantinople, and incarcerated in a nunnery by the 
indignant Pulcheria. 

But the young girl had a spirit beyond her years. 
She had heard of the formidable nation of the Huns, 
which awaited, in the neighbourhood of the Danube and 
the Volga, its turn to fill the Imperial stage ; she had 
heard that the young and powerful Attila had recently 
acceded to the throne of that nation. In some way she 
secured a messenger who took from her a letter and a 
ring to Attila, offering him her heart and her dowry if 
he would release her. The girlish freak was destined to 
have terrible consequences for the Empire. The lady 
herself we may dismiss in a word. She seems to have 
been kept in close confinement in the East until about 
450, sending fruitless messages, from time to time, to her 
romantic lover. Attila had sufficient occupation during 
those fifteen years, and was content to put her name on 
the lengthy list of his wives. When, in 450, he formally 
demanded her person, he was assured that she was 
married. It is not impossible that she was released on 
condition that she accepted a husband chosen for her. 
But her end is obscure, and one is disposed to doubt if 
she would ever have resumed her liberty without joining 
the victorious Hun. 

Placidia died in the year 450, leaving the astute iEtius 
to avert the oncoming disaster by an alliance with the 
Ostrogoths against the Huns. For a quarter of a century 
she had had supreme power over the Western Empire. 
It is, perhaps, only an indication of mediocrity on her 
part that she could not avert the blows that fell upon it 
during that period, but it was a calamity for Rome. 
Her memory survived, in a singular way, for more than 
a thousand years. The pagan habit of cremating the 
bodies of Emperors and Empresses had been replaced by 
the Egyptian process of embalming, and Placidia had 
built a chapel at Ravenna for the reception of her body. 



346 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

There it sat, in a chair of cedar-wood, until the year 
1577, when some children, thrusting a lighted taper into the 
tomb to see it better, set it aflame and reduced it to ashes. 

Meantime, another Empress of the West had appeared. 
In 437 Valentinian had married Licinia Eudoxia, the 
fourteen-year-old daughter of Eudocia, at Constantinople, 
and brought her to Italy. He had parted with a large 
slice of his Empire to Pulcheria and Theodosius for the 
honour, and is said to have held it lightly. The sequel 
will dispose us to believe his irregularities. A youth of 
eighteen at the time, frivolous, luxurious, and light-headed, 
he was content to enjoy the palace, and leave his mother, 
and then iEtius, to discharge his duties. Eudoxia could 
but idly follow the momentous movements of the nations, 
and appreciate the defeat of the Huns in the terrible battle 
of Chalons in 451 ; or shudder when, in the following year, 
Attila marched to the gates of Rome, demanding half the 
Empire as the dowry of his distant bride, Honoria; or 
when, in 453, the profligate Valentinian plunged his sword 
in the breast of his great minister iEtius. A grave personal 
tragedy was upon her. 

The court resided generally at Rome, where Valentinian 
enjoyed the larger and faster amusements of a metropolis. 
Here, in the year 455, he was stabbed by his soldiers, and 
a romantic story is told in connexion with his death. The 
story is rejected by a recent historical writer, Mr. Hodgkin 
(" Italy and her Invaders "), but Professor Bury has shown 
that it is probably true in substance. The full story, to 
which fictitious details may have been added before it 
reached Procopius, is that Valentinian, gambling heavily 
with the distinguished Senator Petronius Maximus, obtained 
his ring as a security for the money he had won, Maximus 
had a beautiful wife whom the Emperor desired, and he 
sent the ring to her with a summons to the palace. The 
unsuspecting lady was conducted to Valentinian's, apart- 
ments, and outraged by him. For this crime, and in virtue 
of the general discontent, Maximus had him slain and 
occupied his throne. 



THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 347 

Maximus was a wealthy Roman, of illustrious family, 
and peaceful and luxurious ways, so that we have little 
reason to doubt that an outrage on his wife inspired him 
with the thought of assassination. The further course of 
events adds authority to the narrative. His wife died very 
closely after the death of Valentinian, and he invited or 
compelled Eudoxia to marry him. In the obscurity and 
uncertainty of the records we are unable to understand the 
consent of Eudoxia, even under pressure. Some of the 
later Greeks affirm that he violated her. It is certain, at 
least, that she married him within a month or two of her 
husband's tragic death, and almost immediately afterwards 
sought to destroy him. Our authorities, late and uncertain 
as they are, do not lack plausibility when they affirm that 
he one day confessed that, out of love for her, he had directed 
the assassination of her husband. Rome had returned 
to evil days, and tragedy was brooding over its very 
ruins. 

In a fit of repulsion Eudoxia secretly invited the Vandals 
to cross the Mediterranean and avenge her. Historians 
too lightly admit, in extenuation of her criminal act, that 
she had no hope of help from the East. The aged and 
upright Marcian was, it is true, intent upon the internal 
prosperity of his Empire, but it is extremely doubtful, as 
the sequel will show, whether the deposition of Maximus 
would have offered much difficulty, and Eudoxia was the 
niece of Pulcheria. Her vindictive act hastened the end 
of the Empire. Genseric speedily landed his fierce troops 
on Italian soil, and the Romans at once slew the sullen 
or remorseful Maximus and cast his mangled body in the 
Tiber. The further adventures of Eudoxia, interesting as 
they must have been, are compressed in a few lines. After 
fourteen days' pillage, the Vandals retreated once more 
from the stricken city of Octavian, laden with gold, silver, 
women, and all kinds of valuables. Genseric compelled 
Eudoxia and her two young daughters to accompany him. 
They were detained at Carthage for seven years. The 
Eastern court repeatedly asked for their release, but it 



348 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

was refused until, in 462, the elder daughter, Eudocia, 
was married to Genseric's son. Eudoxia and the second 
daughter, Placidia, were then sent to Constantinople. Years 
afterwards — in one of the legends — we catch a last glimpse 
of Eudoxia, the last prominent Empress of the West. She 
is standing before the column of Simeon Stylites, asking 
him to come and live somewhere on her ample estate. 
Eudocia lived for sixteen years at Carthage, then escaped 
to the East, and ended her life in Palestine. Placidia we 
shall meet again for a moment. 

We turn back to the shrinking Empire of the West, to 
dismiss the last four Imperial shadows that flit about its 
ruins. The vacant throne was occupied by the commander 
of the Roman forces in Gaul, Avitus. He had married, 
since we know that Sidonius Apollinaris was married to 
his daughter Papianilla, but his wife was dead, and we need 
only say that, after he had enjoyed the Imperial banquets 
for a few months, he was degraded to the rank of a 
bishopric by the commander of the barbaric troops, with 
the consent of the disgusted Romans, and he died soon 
afterwards. He was followed by a worthy and able officer, 
whose rule might have illumined a more propitious age ; 
but we find no Empress in association with him, and must 
pass over the four years of his earnest effort to redeem the 
Empire. After his death Libius Severus had a nominal 
and obscure reign of four years (461-5), and again we find 
no Empress in the scanty records. 

The throne remained vacant for nearly two years, 
during which the Vandals harassed the miserable remnant 
of the great Empire. At length the chief commander in 
Italy, Ricimer, sought the aid of the Eastern Empire, and 
the alliance was sealed by the Eastern court sending one 
of its wealthiest and, by birth, most illustrious nobles, 
Anthemius, to occupy the throne. His Empress was 
Euphemia, daughter of the Emperor Marcian by his first 
wife. But her name, and the names of her father and 
her children, are all that we find recorded concerning 
her, and we need not dwell on the failures and quarrels, 



THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 349 

or the last faint flicker of Roman paganism, which 
characterized his inauspicious reign. Within four years 
he quarrelled with Ricimer, and his life was trodden out 
on the streets of Rome. 

For a few months Placidia, the daughter of Eudoxia, 
then occupies the throne. At Constantinople, to which 
she went with her mother from her Vandal captivity, 
she married the wealthy noble Olybrius. He had fled 
from Rome when it was looted by the Vandals, and had 
little mind to exchange the safe luxury of Constantinople 
for its uneasy throne when Ricimer offered it to him. It is 
said that Placidia impelled him. It was a fatal adventure. 
They entered Rome in the train of Ricimer's troops, but 
Olybrius succumbed to that atmosphere of death in a few 
months, and we have not time to discern the features 
of Eudoxia's daughter before she sinks into the large 
category of obscure Imperial widows. His successor, 
Glycerius, a puppet of the chief commander, seems to have 
had no wife. A competitor appeared immediately, and he 
exchanged the uncertain sceptre of the Western Empire 
for the solid crozier of a bishop. 

One faint and shadowy Empress crosses the scene 
before the curtain falls. Once more the Eastern court had 
provided Italy — which was now the Western Roman Empire 
—with a ruler. Julius Nepos set up his court at Ravenna, 
and had for Empress a niece of Verina, the Empress of 
the East. But the barbarian leaders of the barbarian army 
— the only army that remained in the service of Rome — 
resented the Eastern intruder, and marched on Ravenna. 
Nepos fled ignominiously ; and one reads with interest, 
though not without reserve, that he was put to death 
by his predecessor. Bishop Glycerius. The fate of his 
wife is unknown, and the last Empress of the Western 
provinces entirely escapes our search. 

The tattered purple was offered to the commander 
Orestes. He refused it, and allowed them to place it on 
the shoulders of his young son (476). The name of this 
pretty and innocuous boy united, as if in mockery, the 



350 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 

names of Romulus and Augustus. To later times his 
pathetic figure is known as Augustulus, His father was 
slain by the troops immediately afterwards, because he 
refused to distribute one-third of the soil of Italy between 
them. The Empire was now a mere phrase; Rome a 
plaything of the barbarians whom it had cowed for five 
or six hundred years. Odoacer, the latest leader of the 
troops, bade the child put off his purple mantle and begone, 
and some time afterwards — so low had Rome fallen that 
the year of this impressive consummation cannot accurately 
be determined — forced the Senate to abolish the Imperial 
succession in the West. Italy became the kingdom of a 
barbarian. Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Spain were turned 
into the battle-grounds of those fierce tribes who, after the 
violence and darkness of the Middle Ages, would in their 
turn scatter the seed of civilization over the earth. The 
gallery of Western Empresses was closed by the irrevocable 
hand of fate, and the long, quaint gallery of the Byzantine 
Empresses was thrown open. 



INDEX 



Ablabius, 283 

Acerronia PoUia, 102 

Acholius, 318 

Acte, 95, 105, 121 

Actium, 19 

Adultery at Rome, 26, 200 

jElia Capitolina, 160 

— Psetina, 62, 80 
^milianus, L. A. L., 130, 131 
iEtius, 344, 345, 346 

Aier, 253 

Agrippa, M. V., 25, 26, 27 

— son of Julia, 33, 35-6 
Agrippina, the elder, 33, 37, 41, 42,46 

— the younger, 54, 65, 6^, 80, 81, 
82-104 

— memoirs of, 14, 44, 64, 73, 80 
Ahenobarbus, CD., 81 
Albinus, 196, 197, 198 

Alexander Severus, 212, 219-21, 222- 

31 

Alexandra, St., 256 

Alexandria, 159, 207 

Alexandrian Chronicle, the, 307, 311 

Alexianus. See Alexander 

Ambrose, St., 266, 314, 315, 318, 319 

Anastasia, 288 

Anicetus, 100, 102, 103, iii 

Annius Verus, 164 

" Anonymus Valesii," 267 

Antinous, 157, 159 

Antioch, 27, 145, 171 

Antonia, 81 

Antoninus Pius, 162, 163, 165-8, 169 

Apollodorus, 153 

Appian, 202 



Appius Silanus, 68 

Appuleia Varilia, 42 

Arcadia, 328 

Arcadius, 320, 321, 323, 325, 326-32 

Argentocoxus, 203 

Argobastes, 321 

Arintheus, 325 

Arsenius, 320 

Asiaticus, Valerius, 71-2 

Astrology at Rome, 85 

Ataulph, 341, 342 

Athanasius, 295, 296 

Athenais, 333, 334 

Athens, 158 

Attains, 239 

Attianus, 142, 147, 149, 153 

Attila, 345, 346 

Auctions of Caligula, the, 54, 37 

Augustans, the, 119, 120 

Augustine, St., 274, 314 

Augustulus, 350 

Augustus, title of, 19 

Aurelian, 241, 245-51 

Avitus, 348 

Bacchanalia, the, 74 

Baiae, 53, loi 

Balbinus, 235, 236 

Barbatoria, 14 

Baring-Gould, Mr., 3, 90, 91, 100, 103, 

118 
Baronius, 256, 311 
Basil, St., 310 
Bassani, 186 r 

Bassianus, the elder, 195 
— the younger. See Caracalla 



351 



352 



THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 



Bassianus, Senator, 273 

— V. A. See Elagabalus 

Bassus, Pomponius, 217 

Bauto, 326 

Berenice, 130 

Boissier, M., 136 

Boniface, Count, 344 

Britannicus, 65, 76, 83, 86, 92, 96 

Bruttius Praesens, 182 

Burrus, 85, 92, 95, 103, 107, 108 

Bury, Prof., 211, 273, 277, 280, 346 

Csenis, 128-9 

Caesar, Julius, 6, 10 

Cassonia, Milonia, 55, 56, 59, 130 

Caius Caesar = Caligula 

Caius, son of Julia, 32-3 

Caledonians, the, 203 

Caligula, 37, 49-59 

Callistus, 80 

Calpurnia, 75, 79, 84 

Calpurnius Piso, 52 

Candidian, 263 

Capitolinus, Julius, 166, 172, 173 

Capreae, 34, 48 

Caracalla, 196, 199, 202, 203, 204-9 

Caractacus, 84 

Carinus, 252-4 

Carnuntum, 261 

Carus, 251 

Cassianus Postumus, 242 

Cassiodorus, 267 

Cassius, Avidius, 175, 177 

Castricia, 330 

Ceionia, 170 

Celsa, Nonia, 210, 213 

Celsus, 153 

Centumcellae, 182 

Charito, 306 

Christians, persecution of the, 257-9 

Chrysaphius, 336, 337 

Chrysostom, John, 327, 328. 329, 

330-2 
Cinna, 20 
Circus, the, 7 

— factions of the, 56, 109, 124 
Claudii, the, 9 

Claudius, 60, 61, 62, 64-76, 79-82, 141 

— II, 244 
Cleander, 187 



Cleopatra, 8, 10, 13, 18, 19 

— servant of Claudius, 75, 79 
Clodia, 12 

Cohen, 238, 253, 307 
Cologne, 84, 138 
Commodus, L. C, 157, 162 

— L. v., 169, 170, 172, 175, 180 

— son of Marcus, 172, 181, 182-9 
Constans, 286, 289 
Constantia, 273, 275, 276, 283 

— wife of Gratian, 313 
Constantina, F. J., 288, 289, 290-3 
Constantine, 260, 271-85 

— the younger, 286, 287 
Constantinople, founding of, 283, 284 
Constantius, 254, 260, 266-71 

— the younger, 286, 287, 289, 29, 
292-304 

— General, 342 
Contubernium, 129 
Corbulo, Domitius, 130 
Cornificia, 205 

Corruption at Rome, 21, 34, 136-7 

Crepereius Gallus, 102 

Crinitus, Ulpius, 250 

Crispilla, Quintia, 236 

Crispina, 183, 184 

Crispus, 274, 278-82 

— Passienus, 6^ 
Curia mulierum, 6, 202 

Daza, 259 

" Deaths of the Persecutors," 256, 

258 
Decius, 237 
Delmatius, 286, 287 
Dexippus, 225 
Diadumenianus, 210 
Didia Clara, 192, 193 
Dill, Dr. S., 136 
Dio, 9, 15. 16, 26, 29, 43, 45, 51, 64, 

73. 84, 95. 99. 114. 129, 131, 133, 

142, 146, 169, 176, 188, 200, 202, 

207, 228 
Diocletian, 253-60, 261, 262 
Divination at Rome, 85 
Dominica, Albia, 307, 308, 310 
Domitia Lepida, 68, 89 

— Longina, 130, 131-5 
Domitian, 130-4 



INDEX 



353 



Domitian, Prefect, 292 
Domitilla, Flavia, 128, 130 
Domna, Julia, 194, 195, 196-209 
Domus Vectiliana, 190 
Drepanum, 266 
Drusilla, daughter of Agrippina, 51 

— daughter of Csesonia, 55, 59 
Drusus Nero, 15 

— son of Agrippina, 47 

— son of Livia, 24, 31, 37, 41, 61 
Duruy, 148, 156, 161, 172, 239 

Eboracum, 155, 203 
Eclectus, 188, 193 
Elagabal, 195, 215 
Elagabalus, 200, 211-21 
Eleuthera, St., 256 
Emesa, 195, 209, 212 
Empress, the title, 9 
Ennia, 50-1 
Ephesus, 158 
Epicureanism, 164 
Etruscilla, Herennia, 237 
Eucer, no 
Eudocia, 334-8 
Eudoxia, 325, 326, 327-31 

— Licinia, 335, 346, 347 
Euphemia, 348 

Eusebia. Aurelia, 294, 296-301, 303 
Eusebius, Bishop, 249, 257, 262, 267, 
275, 279, 287, 296 

— eunuch, 295 

Eutropia, Galeria Valeria, 254, 270, 

283 
Eutropius, 325, 326, 327, 328 

— historian, 200, 206, 257, 268, 272, 
275. 279 

Fabia, 180, 181 
Fadilla, 187 

— Julia, 158 

— Junia, 230 
Falco, 190 

Fausta, 271, 272, 277, 278-82 
Faustina, the elder, 163, 164-8 

— the younger, 169, 170-8 

— Maxima, 304, 308 

— Rupilia, 164 
Faustinopolis, 177 
Felix, 112 

23 



Firth, Mr., 267, 277, 280 
Flaccilla, iElia, 317, 318 
Flaminian Circus, 30 
Flavian, Archbishop, 336, 337 
Forum, the, 7, 19 

— of Trajan, the, 143 
Freedmen at Rome, 62, 63, 68 
Fronto, 166, 172 

Fucine Lake, 87 

Fulvia, 10, 12, 13 

Fundana, Galeria, 123, 124, 125, 

126-8 
Fumilla, Marcia, 129, 130 

Gainas, 329 

Galba, Sulpicius, 67, 120, 123 

Galerius, 254, 256, 258, 260, 261 

Galla, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321 

Gallienus, 238, 239, 242, 244 

Gallus, 237, 290-4 

Gannys, 212 

Gardner, A., 299 

Genseric, 347 

Germanicus, 37-8 

Geta, 196, 201, 202, 204, 205 

Gibbon, 2, 45, 131, 136, 141, 169, 211, 
224, 225, 228, 239, 245, 247, 248, 
267, 274, 278. 301, 331, 337 

Glycerius, 349 

Golden House of Nero, 115, 129 

Gordianus, 234 

— the younger, 236 
Gorres, Dr., 279 
Goteke, 270 

Gratian, 307, 312, 313, 314 
Greece, Nero in, 119 
Gregorovius, 151, 156, 161 
Giildenpenning, 317 

Hadrian, 139, 141, 142. 145, 147, 

149-63. 169 
Hannibalian, 286, 287, 288 
Helena, 265, 266-70, 277, 278, 282-3 

— wife of Julian, 297, 298, 299-304 
Henderson, Mr., 90. 109 
Herennianus, 241 

Herod, 27 

— Agrippa, 49, 59 
Herodes, 241 

Herodian, 200, 201, 206, 225 



354 



THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 



"Historia Augusta," the, 45, 142, 
146, 150, 152, 166, 172, 175, 188, 
205, 206, 211, 217, 249, 257 

Hodgkin, Mr., 346 

Honoria, 535, 342, 344, 345 

Honorius, 317, 321, 323, 324, 341, 342 

Hortensius, 19 

Hostilianus, 237 

Huns, the, 344 

Ifland, Dr., 317 
Imperator, the title, 9 

Jerome, St., 267, 279 

Jerusalem, 159, 160 

Josephus, 112, 130, 132 

Jovian, 306, 307 

Julia, daughter of Octavian, 23-30 

— the younger, 33-4 

— daughter of Drusus, 66-7 
— ■ daughter of Titus, 131 
— • Livilla, 65 

Julian, the Emperor, 140, 166, 172, 

227, 282, 284, 288, 290, 296-305 
Julianus, Didius, 192, 193 
Julius, son of Julia, 32-3 
Junia Claudilla, 49 

— Silana, 98 
Junius Silanus, 49, 50 

Justina. Aviana, 311, 312-17, 318, 

319 
Juvenal, 137 

Komemann, Professor, 45 

Lactantius, 258, 261, 272 

Laeta, 313 

Lsetus, 188, 190, 193 

Lake Agrippa, 114 

Lampridius, 200, 203, 224, 225 

Leontius, 296 

Lepida, Domitia, 68, 89 

— wife of Galba, 123 
Lepidus, 54 

— the Triumvir, 6, 8, 17 
Libanius, 296 
Liberius, 296 
Licinius, 262, 263, 273-5 

— the younger, 276, 278 



Livia, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15-17, 19-21, 24-44 

— MeduUina Camilla, 61 

— Orestilla, 52 
Liviada, 20 
I.ivilla, 41, 47, 54 

Livius Drusus Claudianus, 9 

Locusta, 90, 96 

Lollia Paulina, 52, 55, 80, 83-4 

LoUius, 32 

Londinium, 155 

Lucilla, 175, 179, 183, 184 

Lucius Domitius = Nero 

Lucullan Gardens, the, 71, 72, 75 

Lugdunum, 54 

Lutetia, 154 

Luxury at Rome, 16, 34, 54 

Lycisca, 69 

Macellum, 290 

Macrinus, Opilius, 208, 209-12 

— Sallustius, 225 
Macro, 50-1 
Macrobius, 27 
Maecenas, 12, 18 
Maeonius, 241, 242 

Massa, Julia, 200, 202, 211-19 

Magnentius, 289, 290, 292 

Malala, John, 337 

Mamaea, Julia, 211, 219, 222-31 

Marcella, 24, 25, 26 

Marcellinus, Ammianus, 234, 284, 291, 

294. 299, 300. 311 

— Chronicle of, 319, 337 
Marcellus, 24, 25 
Marcia, 185-9, 193 
Marcian, 339, 347 
Marciana, 139, 140, 144 

— Paccia, 196 

Marcus Aurelius, 162, 164, 167, 169- 

78 
Mardonius, 296 
Maria, 324 
Marina, 307 

— daughter of Eudoxia, 331 
Mariniana, 238 

Marius, 243 

— Maximus, 173, 175, 176 

Mark Antony, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19 
Marriage, Roman, 268-9 
Marsa, 330 



INDEX 



355 



Matidia, the elder, 139, 144, 148 

— the younger, 139 
Maxentius, 261, 273 
Maximian, 254, 261, 271-2 
Maximin, 261, 262, 263 
Maximinus, 229, 230, 232-5 
Maximus, 314, 315, 316, 318 

— Petronius, 346-7 

— Pupienus, 235, 236 
Memnia, 226 
Mercurius, 295 

Merivale, 2, 32, 37, 41, 43, y^, 90, 141, 

147, 172 
Messalina, Statilia, 118, 119, 121, 123 

— Valeria, 60, 61, 62, 63-78, 141 
Metaphrastes, 320 

Milvian Bridge, 29 
Minervina, 274 
Mnester, 70, 76 
Montius, 292 

Naissos, 266 

Narcissus, 63, 68, 75, y6, 79, 87, 92 

Negri, Gaetano, 298 

Nepos, Julius, 349 

Nepotian, 290 

Nero, son of Agrippina the elder, 47 

— the Emperor, 80, 81, 85, 86, 89, 
93. 95. 96-121 

Nerva, M. C, 135 
Nicaea, Council of, 277 
Nicomedia, palace of, 255 
Niger, 196, 197 
Nigrinus, 153 
Nimes, mausoleum at, 148 
Numerianus, 252, 253 

Octavia, 13, 18, 24, 26, 33 

— daughter of Messalina, 65, 76, 80, 
86, 95, 96, 97, 99, 105, 108-11 

Octavian, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 

17-21, 24-36 
Odenathus, 240-2 
Odoacer, 350 
Olybrius, 349 
Oppian Law, the, 5 
Orbiana, Sallustia Barbia, 225 
Orestes, 349 
Orosius, 267, 279 



Orphanages, 144, 168, 177 

Ostia, 74 

Otho, Salvius, loi, 106, 108, no, 123 

Paganism, insincerity of, 216 

Pagans, origin of name, 314 

Pagi, 256 

Palatine Hill, the, 7, 10, 19 

Palladium, the, 216 

Pallas, 63, 80, 83, 85, 96 

Palma, 153 

Palmyra, 240, 241, 246 

Pandateria, 30, 47, in 

Papianilla, 348 

Paris in the fourth century, 302 

Paris, the actor, 98, 132 

Paula, Julia Cornelia, 216 

Paulina, 234 

Paulinus, 333, 334, 336 

Paulus, 295 

Perennis, 185 

Pertinax, 189-91 

Petronia, 124 

Petronius, 307 

Philanthropy in the Roman world, 

144, 168, 177 
Philip, the Emperor, 236, 237 
Philostorgius, 280, 287, 293 
Philostratus, 202 
Pipara, 239 
Piso, C. C, 38, 39 
Pissamena, 313 
Placidia, M\v& Galla, 324, 334, 341, 

342-5 

— the younger, 349 
Planasia, 35 
Plancina, 38, 39 
Plautia Urgulanilla, 61 
Plautianus, 199-201 
Plautilla, 199, 201 
Pliny, 9, 42, 139 
Plotina, 138-48 
Polemo, 166. 167 

PoUio, Trebellius, 240, 247 

Polybius, 63 

Pompeianus, Claudius, 181, 184, 205 

Pompeius Planta, 138 

Pompey, 8 

Poppsea, 99, 107, 108, 1 10-17 

— Sabina, 72, 107 



356 



THE EMPRESSES OF ROME 



Poppaeus Sabinus, 107 
Porphyry of Gaza, 329 
Praetorian Guards, the, 50, 58, 61, 

119, 227 
Prisca, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261-4 
Probus, 251 
Procopius, 308-9 
Puech, Professor, 329, 332 
Puellae Faustinianae, 168, 177 
Pulcheria, 317, 328, 332-9 
Puteoli, 53 
Pyrallis, 55 
Pythagoras, 114 

Quadratus, 184, 185 
Quietus, Lusius, 152, 153 
Quintilius, 245 

Religion at Rome, 216 
Renan, 136, 172 
Ricimer, 348, 349 
Rome, burning of, 114 
Romula, 256, 258 
Rostra, the, 29 
Rubellius Piautus, 98 
Rufinus, 325, 326, 327 
Rufus Crispinus, 108 

Sabina, 139, 144, 148, 149-61, 202 

Sabinus, 131 

Sacred Way, the, 8 

Sallustius, 307 

Salona, 260 

Salonina. Cornelia, 239, 244 

Saloninus, 242 

Sapor, 240, 247 

Saturninus, 337 

Scantilla, Manlia, 192, 193 

Schultz, O., 45 

Scotland, 203 

Scribonia, 12, 13, 14, 22 

Seeck, Dr., 279 

Sejanus, 41, 42, 47 

Selinus, 146 

Senaculum, 214 

Senate, the Roman, 43, 93, 103, iii, 

119, 153 
Seneca, 31, 66, jy, 85, 93, 95, 96, 97, 

107, 108, no, 115 



Serena, 324 

— St., 256 

Servianus, Ursus, 149, 162 

Serviez, Roergas de, 3, 4, 32, 33, 67, 

87, 90, 112, 146, 153, 166, 207 
Servilia, 11 
Severa, Julia Aquilia, 216 

— Marcia Otacilia, 237 

— Valeria, 307, 311, 312 
Severian, 263 

— Bishop, 330 
Severina, Ulpia, 250 
Severus. 261 

— deacon, 337 

— Livius, 348 

— Septimus, 193, 194-204 
Sextilia, 124, 125, 126, 127 
Sextus Pompeius, 10, 12, 17 
Sidonius ApoUinaris, 280, 348 
Silanus, Junius, 95 

— Lucius, 95 

Silius, Caius, 72, 73, 74, j6 

Silvagni, V., 3 

Simeon Stylites, 338, 348 

Sinuessa, 90 

Smyrna, 158 

Soaemias, Julia, 200, 203, 211, 212, 

213, 214-21 
Socrates, the historian, 312 
Sosibius, 71, 72 
Sozomen, 276 

Spartianus, 146, 155, 157, 160 
Sporus, 118, 121 
Stahr, A., 3 
Stilicho, 324, 325 

Stoicism, 66, 135, 144, 162, 164, 168 
Subura, 6, 9, 21, 29 
Suetonius, 31, 40, 42, 45, 48, 53, 55, 

64, 88, 90, 134, 155 
Suidas, 296 
Suillius, 71 
Sulpicianus, 192 
Sura, 142, 150 
Syria and Rome, 222 

Tacitus, 9, 14, 31, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 
64, 72, 79, 80, 83, 90, 95, 99, III, 
125 

— the Emperor, 251 
Tarvey, Mr., 32 



INDEX 



357 



TertuUa, Arricidia, 129 

TertuUus, 171 

Tetricus, 243, 249 

Theatre, the Roman, 58, 109 

Thebes, 159, 160 

Theoclea, 230 

Theodora, FlaviaMaximiana, 270,283 

Theodoret, 310, 316 

Theodosius, 313, 314, 316, 317-21 

~ II, 328, 332-8 

Theophanes, 336, 337 

Theophilus, 304, 330 

Thermantia, A. M., 324 

Thessalonica, massacre of, 319 

Thirty Tyrants, the, 239 

Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, 65 

Nero, 10, II, 14, 15, 40 

— the Emperor, 10, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 

34. 35. 36-42, 46-9 
Tigellinus, no, 116 
Tillemont, 307, 312, 324, 326, 330, 

331 
Timesitheus, 236 
Timolaus, 241 
Titiana, Flavia, 190, 191 
Titus, 129, 131 

— OUius, 107 
Tivoli, 156, 160 
Toledo, Council of, 269 
Trajan, 135, 138, 139-46 
Tranquillina, Furia Sabina, 236 
Triaria, 127 

Triumphal procession, 7 

Ulpianus, Domitius, 227, 228 
Urbica, Magnia, 253 
Urgulania, 40, 61 

Vaballath, 241, 242 
Valens, 307, 308, 309, 310 



Valentinian, 307, 311-13 

— II, 313, 318, 319, 321 

— Ill, 335, 342, 343, 346 
Valeria, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261-4 
Valerianus, 238 

Valerius Messala Barbatus, 62 

Vandals, the, 344, 347 

Velabrum, 6, 7, 9 

Verina, 349 

Vespasian, 127, 128-9, 138 

^'estal Virgins, 132 

Vestinus, Atticus, 118 

Vetranio, 289 

Vettius Valens, 74, 76 

Vibidia, 75 

Vice in the Roman Empire, 136-7,144 

Victor, Aurelius, 161, 165, 200, 207, 

257, 268, 279, 284 

"Epitome," 148, 206, 280, 312 

Victoria, 242-4 

Victorinus, 243 

Vindex, 120 

Vipsania, 28 

Vitellius, the elder, 56, 71, 75, So, 82, 

124 
— the Emperor, 124-8 
Volusianus, 237 
Vopiscus, 245, 247 

Wilkins, M. G., 197, 207 

Woman, position of, at Rome, 4-6 

Xenophon, 91 

Zabda, 246 

Zenobia, 240, 241, 242, 244-50 
Zonaras, 268, 272, 276, 303 
Zosimus, 234, 245, 248, 249, 257, 267, 
272, 276, 280, 284, 298, 316, 320 



PRINTED BY 

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., 

LONDON AND AYLESBURY. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: j^fly 2007 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 ThorriEon Park Drive 
Cranberrv Townshic. PA 16066 



